In salesforce.com can you have multivalued attributes?

Question

I am developing a Novell Identity Manager driver for Salesforce.com, and am trying to understand the Salesforce.com platform better.

I have had really good success to date. I can read pretty much arbitrary object classes out of SFDC, and create eDirectory objects for them, and what not. This is all done and working nicely. (Publisher Channel). Once I got Query events mapped out, most everything started working in the Publisher Channel.

I am now working on sending events back to SFDC (Subscriber channel) when changes occur in eDirectory.

I am using the upsert() function in the SOAP API, and with Novell Identity Manager, you basically build the SOAP doc, and can see the results as you build it. (You can do it in XSLT or you can use the various allowed tokens to build the document in DirXML Script. I am using DirXML Script which has been working well so far.).

The upshot of that comment is that I can build the SOAP document, see it, to be sure I get it right. Which is usually different than the Java/C++ approach that the sample code usually provides. Much more visual this way.

There are several things about upsert() that I do not entirely understand. I know how to blank a value, should I get that sort of event. Inside the <urn:sObjects> node, add a node like (assuming you get your namespaces declared already):

<urn1:fieldsToNull>FieldName</urn1:fieldsToNull>

I know how to add a value (AttrValue) to the attribute (FieldName), add a node like:

<FieldName>AttrValue</FieldName>

All this works and is pretty straight forward.

The question I have is, can a value in SFDC be multi-valued? In eDirectory, a multi valued attribute being changed, can happen two ways:

• All values can be removed, and the new set re-added.
• The single value removed can be sent as that sort of event (remove-value) or many values can be removed in one operation.

Looking at SFDC, I only ever see Multi-picklist attributes that seem to be stored in a single entry : or ; delimited. Is there another kind of multi valued attribute managed differently in SFDC? And if so, how would one manipulate it via the SOAP API?

I still have to decide if I want to map those multi-picklists to a single string, or a multi valued attribute of strings. First way is easier, second way is more useful... Hmmm... Choices...

Some references:

• I have been using the page Sample SOAP messages to understand what the docs should look like.
• Apex Explorer is a kicking tool for browsing the database and testing queries. Much like DBVisualizer does for JDBC connected databases. This would have been so much harder without it!
• SoapUi is also required, and a lovely tool!

Answer 1

As far as I know there's no multi-value field other than multi-select picklists (and they map to semicolon-separated string). Generally platform encourages you to create a proper relationship with another (possibly new, custom) table if you're in need of having multiple values associated to your data.

Only other "unusual" thing I can think of is how the OwnerId field on certain objects (Case, Lead, maybe something else) can be used to point to User or Queue record. Looks weird when you are used to foreign key relationships from traditional databases. But this is not identical with what you're asking as there will be only one value at a time.

Of course you might be surpised sometimes with values you'll see in the database depending on the viewing user's locale (stuff like System Administrator profile becoming Systeembeheerder in Dutch). But this will be still a single value, translated on the fly just before the query results are sent back to you.

When I had to perform SOAP integration with SFDC, I've always used WSDL files and most of the time was fine with Java code generated out of them with Apache Axis. Hand-crafting the SOAP message yourself seems... wow, hardcore a bit. Are you sure you prefer visualisation of XML over the creation of classes, exceptions and all this stuff ready for use with one of several out-of-the-box integration methods? If they'll ever change the WSDL I need just to regenerate the classes from it; whereas changes to your SOAP message creation library might be painful...