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shan25shan25 

API access using a single/common user account

 

We are planning on building a customer facing external web application that will use the REST/SOAP API of Salesforce for data read/write.For the communication between our application and the SFDC we are contemplating on using a single/common user account (integration user). One reason for this approach is because we have our own authentication where customers already have their account/credentials and it will be desirable to NOT have customers create and maintain a separate one for SFDC.

From what I've researched so far, following are some of the factors to be considered if a common user account approach is taken:

  1. Limit on number of query that a user can execute concurrently
  2. Session Timeouts - Sharing the session id/auth token and managing the timeouts ( since we may have multiple concurrent request hitting the SFDC with the same credentials)
  3. Record ownership - Owner of the record will be the common user and not the customer. The ownership skew problem as described in this link


At this point, I'm looking for some advice from folks experienced in using the SFDC APIs, to please advice of any other issues/areas that I should be considering before going further in this direction.


Thanks

Shankar

Rakesh BoddepalliRakesh Boddepalli

Single Account is always most advisable  in these cases.

 

- One another limit is that , you can invoke 5 API calls per second Max as the response time for salesforce.com is 200ms per transaction.

- the other downside is , if some other process or job using this integration account attempts to connect to SFDC with wrong password then salesforce.com locks the user account for few minutes, which causes all the job or integrations dependent on this user to fail

 

Benefits

- This will save you license cost .

- you can create this as API only user , so users cannot login using account thru GUI.

- And helps you in tracing the changes whether they are done thru API or thru GUI.

 
shan25shan25

Many thanks for the quick response.  Will be great if you can provide more info on one of the response:

 

- One another limit is that , you can invoke 5 API calls per second Max as the response time for salesforce.com is 200ms per transaction.

I don't see this in the documentation. I only see two governing API limits as in this link which are

a) Concurrent API Request Limits which is applicable only if the request takes 20 seconds or more

b) Total API Request Limit which is a per day limit

 

Can you please elaborate or point me to the documentation which states the 5 API calls per second max?  And also, is this limit per user?

 

 

Thanks again,

Shankar
Rakesh BoddepalliRakesh Boddepalli

"You can invoke 5 API calls per second Max as the response time for salesforce.com is 200ms per transaction"

 

I don't see this mentioned anywhere in the documentation .

 

But, I'm saying this based on past experiences with the system