Trailblazer DX - 2022

Some notes on the sessions from the Trailblazer DX conference in San Fransisco, CA in April of 2022.

New Things in LWC

Light DOM

• Available in LWC OSS and available (now or soon) on the platform
  • Ability to opt out of the shadow DOM rendering of the LWC
• Pros of Shadow DOM usage:
  • Scoped styling, both to keep styles from leaking up or down
• Cons of Shadow DOM usage:
  • Events don’t bubble up past the shadow root
• SSR for LWC is coming for the SFDC platform, but it’s already available for the LWC OSS

DevOps Center - Practical Use Cases

Took a lot of notes, split it out to another note: here

Building with CodeBuilder

• In-browser editor
• Looks to be built on Monaco / VS Code
• Features
  • Full-featured IDE mainly configured for SFDC languages / frameworks
  • Has access to all of the VS Code extensions that you’re used to in VS Code
  • CLI: both sfdx and sf via the embedded terminal
  • SOQL Builder directly in the IDE
• Open Beta available in summer
  • Distributed as a package in AppExchange
• When you launch CodeBuilder you have to choose a single org and point to your files (source control)
  • Once your in CodeBuilder you can connect to multiple orgs, etc… it looks just like the org picker / auth flow that you use with the VS Code extensions
• Example workflow
  • Pull in code from Source control (if you have it)
  • Connect to org
  • Work
  • Deploy to org
  • Deploy to source control
• Built on OSS
  • code-server
  • Code OSS
• Mulesoft is coming to CodeBuilder
• Some extensions other than SFDC might be supported, I’ll have to check
• Settings will sync based on your “user?”
• No intention to deprecate the Dev Console, but goal is to basically replace it with CodeBuilder
• Pricing?
  • TBD, will be announced after the beta

DevOps Updates for Architects

• 4 Key metrics for DevOps success
  • Deployment frequency up
  • Lead time to change down
  • Change failure rate down
  • Time to restore due to failure down
• Features / Products coming down the pipe for DevOps
  • CodeBuilder
  • sf - Unified CLI
  • Updates to how Profiles work for development and deployment
  • Usability enhancements to the VS Code extensions
    • Auth management
    • Org Browser
    • Enhanced Apex Tooling
• Updates to the CLI
  • Reliability Enhancements
    • Source Deploy / Retrieve library now open sourced / better
    • Source Tracking updated / better
    • Federated Dev model
  • Functionality Enhancements
    • Destructive Change Ops
    • Manifest create command
    • Embedded Release notes
  • Usability Enhancements (sf)
    • JSON Output standards
    • Taxonomy standardization
• Updates to the Extensions
  • Manifest builder
  • Conflict detection
  • Salesforce Functions support
  • Upgraded language support, replay debugger, and improvements for Anon Apex & Test files
• Enhancements to Environments
  • Ability to create Scratch Orgs based on Production org licenses, features, etc…
    • Scratch Org Shape - GA in Summer 22
  • Scratch Org Snapshots
    • Allows you to look at any Scratch Org and then use that as a starting point for creating other Scratch Orgs
  • Sandboxes on Hyperforce
    • Performance of cloning/refreshing/creating Sandboxes will be much much faster
• Packaging Enhancements
  • Shape in Unlocked Packages
  • Push Upgrades API: auto-upgrade any unlocked packages installed in any org
  • Create package versions based on the upcoming release
    • Leverage Preview, and Previous to create pakage versions for (N+1) and N release
  • Org-dependent Unlocked Packages
    • Allows you to make a package dependent on unpackaged metadata. This will help us adopt unlocked packages much easier
  • Manage access to Apex tests that run at Package Version Creation
  • Surface duration of long-running package operations to developers
• DevOps Center: see notes from session I attended earlier
  • Will GA with Org-based Development Models

Slack <> SFDC

• The Slack Apex SDK will allow for a much more robust interaction set, including responding to message events in Slack via Apex
• Can also send messages / creating channels / doing stuff in Slack based on SFDC automation

Introducing the SFDC GraphQL API

• Features
  • GraphiQL support
  • Field selection
  • Resource Aggregation
  • Schema Introspection
  • oObject query ability
• Beta release coming this Summer
  • UI API will be the first API to opt into this GraphQL
    • This does support querying sObject records that are on the UI API allow list
    • Standard and Custom Objects / fields are supported
  • Only supports querying to begin with
• Querying
  • Provides rich ordering, filtering (AND / OR / NOT), field selection, and nested / related object querying
• To provide feedback: https://sfdc.co/GraphQLIdeaExchange
• Blog: https://sfdc.co/GraphQLBlog
• LWC
  • GraphQL wire adapters coming, likely in about a year
• Mutations
  • Will be supported eventually, first iteration will be querying only

New gRPC Streaming API

Session Notes

• Event-based Architecture in Salesforce Options
  • Legacy Event System
    • Generic
    • PushTopic
  • Current & Pub Sub APIs
    • Change Data Capture
    • Platform Events
• Can publish events from external apps to SFDC Event Bus via either the REST API or the Pub Sub API
• SFDC Event Bus is built on Kafka
  • New off-core event bus has been developed to handle even larger load and scale, so that more folks can drive more and more event-driven architectures
• Event-based Functions are being developed (or already here?)
• New Pub Sub API Features
  • Subscription flow control: When you have a subscriber, you can limit the number of events that you receive at a time
  • Publish, Subscribe, and Get Schema: All in one API, rather than using separate APIs for them
  • Real-time Publish Acknowledgements:
  • Better language support than CometD: Can leverage all other benefits of gRPC for language support
  • Works with the following event types
    • High Volume Platform Events
    • Change Data Capture Events
    • Real Time Event Monitoring
• gRPC: The new underlying tech behind
  • Created at Google
  • Uses protobuf message format
  • 7-10x faster than REST
  • Library Support for 11 different languages
    • All through Avro support and libraries
  • Enables bidirectional streaming
  • HTTP2
• CometD is no longer the best way to listen for events externally to Salesforce
  • Pub Sub API does not support CometD
• GA coming in June
  • Will be enabled in all production orgs
• Monitoring event subscribers:
  • Streaming Monitor: AppExchange app that Phillipe built

Additional Notes for Me

• I need to learn more about RPC, gRPC
• I need to learn about ChangeData events, as an alternative to Platform Events
• I need to try building a new listener with this new tech rather than CometD

Slack’s New Development Platform

• Functions: Basically like invocable Apex that can be snapped together via Workflow builder
  • There are going to partner-developed functions that you can leverage as well
  • I guess you can build and distribute your own via a marketplace too?
• Building, running, and deploying all built on the new slack CLI tool
  • Can allow for running locally for testing, including hot reloading
  • Allows for templates that you can use to start your project from
  • slack var allows for secret management
• Running on the deno runtime
• Allows for automatic reading of .env files
• Function outputs are primitive, doesn’t support Objects as output

Other Related Topics

• Salesforce
• Technology
• Development

References

• DevOps Center - Practical Use Cases