This is not exactly a "development"  question - yet - but it seemed best to post it here first.  I have a custom object, applications (like in applications that people fill out for a grant, etc) and the applicant on the application record is a contact.  I want to mass email contacts that have applications of certain kinds, such as having applied for a specific type of grant, and I can't see how to create a view where such a join could be done.  The SQL would be something like "select name, email from contact c left join application a on c.contactid = a.contactid where a.app_type = 'grant_type_x'.  Is there any way this can be done out of the box?  I'm relatively new to Salesforce but have lots of experience with MS CRM where these kinds of queries (views) are not a problem and assumed I would find similar functionality in Salesforce but can't find it yet, if it exists.  Thanks.

I am working in c#, am relatively new to the Salesforce API's and am trying to update a custom object dynamically.  I assume there is some way to retrieve (or create) the object, get its fields collection and update via the collection, something like myOjbect.Fields("status__c) = "accepted".  It's necessary to write it in this way because I won't know the fields to update in advance and therefore can't refer to them explicitly, like myObject.status.  Any direction much appreciated.  (also posted this in .net forum)

I am working in c#, am relatively new to the Salesforce API's and am trying to update a custom object dynamically.  I assume there is some way to retrieve (or create) the object, get its fields collection and update via the collection, something like myOjbect.Fields("status__c) = "accepted".  It's necessary to write it in this way because I won't know the fields to update in advance and therefore can't refer to them explicitly, like myObject.status.  Any direction much appreciated.

This is not exactly a "development"  question - yet - but it seemed best to post it here first.  I have a custom object, applications (like in applications that people fill out for a grant, etc) and the applicant on the application record is a contact.  I want to mass email contacts that have applications of certain kinds, such as having applied for a specific type of grant, and I can't see how to create a view where such a join could be done.  The SQL would be something like "select name, email from contact c left join application a on c.contactid = a.contactid where a.app_type = 'grant_type_x'.  Is there any way this can be done out of the box?  I'm relatively new to Salesforce but have lots of experience with MS CRM where these kinds of queries (views) are not a problem and assumed I would find similar functionality in Salesforce but can't find it yet, if it exists.  Thanks.

I am working in c#, am relatively new to the Salesforce API's and am trying to update a custom object dynamically.  I assume there is some way to retrieve (or create) the object, get its fields collection and update via the collection, something like myOjbect.Fields("status__c) = "accepted".  It's necessary to write it in this way because I won't know the fields to update in advance and therefore can't refer to them explicitly, like myObject.status.  Any direction much appreciated.