Comparing the Force.com SOAP API to the New Salesforce Toolkit for .NET

Last week I sat in on a webinar titled, “Build Customer Centric Applications Using the Salesforce Toolkit for .NET“, presented by Wade Wegner and Richard Seroter. As a .NET developer, I was excited to see a new way of connecting Salesforce via .NET. But, I was REALLY excited when I heard that the new toolkit was open-source and provided native libraries that utilized the async and await model in .NET.

I instantly knew that this new method would provide a lightning fast, near real-time alternative for connecting to Salesforce. And, after a little effort putting together a benchmark application, I was able to prove it.

At first, I tried to create a web application using Visual Studio 2010 that would test both the Force.com SOAP API and the new Salesforce Toolkit for .NET. Unfortunately, since the new Salesforce toolkit depends on the Task object and the async and await keywords (which came about with .NET Framework 4.5), using Visual Studio 2010 was not an option.

So, I moved the code to a Visual Studio 2012 web application and added the new Salesforce Toolkit via NuGet Packet Manager (NOTE: that you will need to have NuGet client version 2.8.1 or above, so you may have to take an extra step of upgrading that as I did).

The test application was simple. For both tests, a connection to Salesforce was established and a new case was created. A StopWatch timer was used to measure the run time to the millisecond. The Results?

Well, you should not be surprised to learn that the async-based task using the new toolkit was so fast, it did not even register a single millisecond. That’s right, the time returned was 0.0.

Creating the case via the Force.com SOAP API took an average of 2.32 seconds. Now, you might think 2.32 seconds ain’t bad. But, that time will always vary and could be much longer depending on the process to perform, amount of data and connection speed. There is just no WAY a synchronous method will ever be able to compete with an asynchronous process in terms of processing speed. PERIOD!!!

Now, that also does not mean that the new toolkit does not have it’s issues to consider. Asynchronous processing by itself brings about all sorts of other considerations (such as more complexity), and the following lists some things to consider if you choose to move forward with using the new Salesforce Toolkit for .NET in your org:

1. You will have to create a connected app in your Salesforce org and then reference the consumer secret and key it provides inside of your code. See this post by Richard Seroter for more on that.
2. If you use the new toolkit with an ASP.NET page, you will need to do a few extra things, like add an Async=”true” attribute to your page tag and register the async task. Go here to find more information about how to use asynchronous methods in ASP.NET 4.5.
3. You will have to create a class that defines the Salesforce object you are accessing. This is the most annoying part for me and something I would like to see addressed. With the Force.com SOAP API, you can reference these definitions through the Web Reference you create. You do not have to create them specifically. This means that the Salesforce Toolkit is loosely tied to your org and therefore does not respect any required fields when it comes to object creation. I actually experimented with using the Case reference from the SOAP API in my asynchronous call using the new toolkit, and got back an error when I tried to add a case with no ClosedDateSpecified. This error was not thrown back when I used my own custom class to define the minimal fields for a Case object.

As far as the code is concerned, the following is the code used to perform the test using the new Salesforce Toolkit for .NET:

public class Case
{
        public string Id { get; set; }
        public string Subject { get; set; }
        public string Description { get; set; }
        public string AccountId { get; set; }
        public string Priority { get; set; }
        public string Status { get; set; }
}

public partial class Test : System.Web.UI.Page
{
        public const String subject = "Test Case";
        public const String description = "testing";
        public const String accountId = "001d000001UsLAX";
        public const String priority = "Medium";
        public const String status = "New";
        public const String username = "your user name here";
        public const String password = "your password and security code here";
        public const String consumerKey = "your connected apps consumer key here";
        public const String consumerSecret = "your connected apps consumer secret here";

        protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            
        }
        protected void NewToolkit_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            //Time how long it takes 
            Stopwatch sp = new Stopwatch();
            sp.Start();
            RegisterAsyncTask(new PageAsyncTask(TestToolkit));
            sp.Stop();
            TimeSpan ts = sp.Elapsed;
            //Display the Results of timer
            lblResults.Text = "Runtime: "
                + String.Format("{0:00}:{1:00}:{2:00}.{3:00}",
                    ts.Hours, ts.Minutes,
                    ts.Seconds, ts.Milliseconds / 10);
        }
        
        async Task TestToolkit()
        {
            
            //create a connection and get a token to create a new client
            var auth = new AuthenticationClient();
            await auth.UsernamePasswordAsync(consumerKey, consumerSecret, username, password);
            var instanceUrl = auth.InstanceUrl;
            var accessToken = auth.AccessToken;
            var apiVersion = auth.ApiVersion;
            var client = new ForceClient(instanceUrl, accessToken, apiVersion);

            Case sfCase = new Case()
            {
                Subject = subject,
                Description = description,
                AccountId = accountId,
                Priority = priority,
                Status = status
            };

            string Id = await client.CreateAsync("Case", sfCase);
            lblMessage.Text = "The following case was saved sucessfully: " + Id;

        }
}