Extending SalesForce.com and SOA with rich internet applications

The team at Nitobi have been working on a contact management application that's built in Adobe AIR and hooks into the SalesForce.com API. They did it to show off some of their components but the actual demo is a good example of where rich internet applications can really start to make a difference: making current systems easier to use.

Their demo (see a screencast here)shows off what a desktop SalesForce application might look like. In the demo, you have access to all of your customer data and any changes you make will be saved to the server. But because it's built with Adobe AIR, they also keep a local version of all the data so that you can work offline with it and sync the changes up when you're ready. In addition, they've added support for being able to drag and drop Vcards onto the application to create a new customer or edit an existing record with new data.

This is just a demo but it speaks to how well RIAs can fit in the web model. A ton of attention has been given to service-oriented architecture (SOA). I'm still not sure I understand all of the nuances behind the buzzword, but because of the popularity of SOA we've got some fantastic back end systems with open APIs. This is meant to give developers flexibility to create custom experiences on top of a solid backend which make them more productive. That fits quite nicely with the goals behind rich internet applications.

This demo shows a lot of the synergies between SOA and RIA. Service oriented architecture exposes systems that can be enhanced and made easier to use by adopting a rich internet application strategy. In a lot of cases, that extensibility will happen on the desktop. The benefit of Adobe AIR is that you can use the same skills you've been using. It's an exciting time.

See Also:
Dave Johnson on how the app was built
Ajaxian for coverage