Lovely Salesforce (for Non-Admin Users)

When is a SOQL SELECT not a SELECT? When it references a table whose selection syntax restrictions depend on who is selecting.  I was running a complete CopyForce on a development database this morning to validate an upgrade to Eclipse/Helios. This time I ran the CopyForce using a non-admin user. I discovered that two tables (NewsFeed and EntitySubscription) will not accept the same SELECT syntax when referenced by a non-admin. Mine is not to wonder why.  Anyway, problem fixed and new distributions have been posted.

The CopyForce feedback I am seeing indicates that most people are taking the default options and trying to copy entire Salesforce instances.  No problem...this will work. For production purposes we usually restrict what is copied because quite a few of the tables (like EntitySubscription) are not important for us to backup anyway.

Here is an interesting use case: We wanted Salesforce pricebooks duplicated in our accounting system. CopyForce can do this on one line:

• java -jar CopyForceSqlServer.jar -salesforce production -schema -include Pricebook2,Product2 -sqlserver "...."

This will copy just Pricebook2 and Product2 into the target SQL Server database. Support we wanted to also copy all of the tables referenced by Pricebook2 and Product2. CopyForce does not have a command line switch for this case -- you have to use a CopyForce configuration file (see the -config switch). More on this in a later post.