function readOnly(count){ }
Starting November 20, the site will be set to read-only. On December 4, 2023,
forum discussions will move to the Trailblazer Community.
+ Start a Discussion
ollie123ollie123 

Is force.com a suitable back-end for a public mobile app?

I'm designing a service that will comprise a cloud-based database (with a UI for us to manage the data), and then a mobile app for end-users that displays the data to people who want it (primarily read-only). The end-users will be anonymous, and will NOT each have a user account. 

 

In theory force.com suits my needs well:

- It is a solid, cloud-based database

- It has an API and mobile SDKs

- It has a UI, so managing the data is easy, without writing loads of form code

- It scales

 

However my reading of the docs suggests that force.com is designed for enterprise apps, where every user has a user account, which is very different. So if I used force.com I would be hard-coding login details into the mobile client app and using a session login, combined with a single shared user account with very limited access permissions. i.e. every single API call will be from the same user account, but across tens of thousands of devices.

 

My experience of Salesforce is that it's great until you hit a limit, and they come out of nowhere. "You've hit the limit of lookup fields" waaaah? "You cannot access long text fields from formulas" waaah! "you cannot add a roll-up summary field to a lookup relationship" aaaargh! So given this, I need to understand what limits may apply with force.com so I understand what I'm getting into from the start:

 

Will force.com offer the same per-transaction and per-record charges as database.com?

Is force.com designed for my scenario?

Are there any limits on transaction volume?

What are the limits for each transaction? I assume there's a governor limit.

Are there any limits on concurrent transactions per user account? The docs seem to suggest a max 10 which would render force.com useless to me, but will database.com have this limit?

Can clients sign in via the API without going through the stupid activation process or specifying an IP range? (drives me nuts on Salesforce!)

 

If anyone can shed any light on using force.com in this scenario I'd be very grateful. I'd be particularly interested to hear from anyone who has built such an app.

 

Thanks