Model Metrics is fortunate enough to work with three really interesting – and really different – companies in the Cloud Computing space: Salesforce.com, Amazon Web Services and Google App Engine. The question I get most often is “What’s the difference?”

It’s a fair question, so let me answer it using a food analogy.*

Amazon Web Services – AWS – is a bunch of raw ingredients: flour, egg, vanilla – everything you need if you want to bake a pretty decent cake. But you have to know which ingredients to use, how to combine them and how long to cook the whole thing for.

Google App Engine – GAE – is a cake mix. It has most of the ingredients but you have to add some and do a bunch of work. You have to add eggs and oil, stir, bake and frost. You do that work using their recipe and you do indeed get a pretty tasty cake.

Salesforce.com – SFDC – is a fully baked chocolate cake.** And you get to pick the frosting. You can use the frosting it comes with out of the can or you can make your own. And if want vanilla or fudge marble, you can probably make that happen too.

What will be interesting is to watch how the different players in this market try to climb the food chain to be more cake like. AWS and GAE may never choose to create a full cake the way that SFDC has but, then again, they might. I’m pretty convinced SFDC will keep their lead in this area for a long time to come.

After SFDC, I’m most interested in AWS – there’s a lot of real power there. For the next few years, there will be some really interesting work done in fork lifting applications from some dirt bound deployment to AWS.*** Organizations looking to gain instant benefit from Cloud Computing can by simply deploying a bit differently than they do today. AWS is a great destination.

That’s my cake analogy. Hopefully it gives you a taste for the flavors of Cloud Computing you might take advantage of. ****

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* Food. Yum yum yum. If you’re coming to Dreamforce 2009 and are looking for food, come find me and we’ll go get something. You’ll probably need to remind me of this post.
** True signs you use an iPhone too much: you try to insert a period using a double space. As I just did here. Three times.
*** GAE isn’t a great option for this – GAE works best for new development.
**** Get it? “Taste?” “Flavor?” Awesome, I know.

Posted a couple of minor updates to Cloud Converter, mostly small bug fixes that affected the metadata explorer feature. If you already have it installed as a web tab in your org, there’s nothing you need to do. You automatically have access to these. Enjoy!

Had an interesting challenge the other day: all the best last data migration plans were failing. Why? The tool of choice — which one is not important — failed. What to do?

I used Cloud Converter. Quelle surprise, right? I could have used something else, but it’s some decent code that I’m familiar with — so I used it. How?

I first did a test to be sure the API was working using a SalesforceSession object. Why test? Well, you never know. Why the Cloud Converter provided "SalesforceSession"? It’s easy. One line of code or so with a valid user and I established that the user was good, that the API was functional and that the user had rights to the API.

Sweet!

Then I moved to the source documents. I had two kinds: Simple CSV’s and Complex CSV’s.

Simple CSV’s were easy. I added a standard Java FileReader to the sample code, pointed it at the file, and split the data into component parts. Then I built a collection of "Sproxy" objects, added the SalesforceSession to a SalesforceDAO and executed an upsert. Start to finish, about 5 minutes for the first file.

Complex CSV’s were tougher. The difference between simple and complex was that the data contained commas. I know, this seems like it should be relatively easy, but at the time I was drawing a blank. So I imported those Complex CSV’s into Excel, saved them as Excel files and then used another Cloud Converter class, ExcelConverterService.

ExcelConverterService reads an XLS and breaks the data in the cells into a collection of type safe objects. Then I did the same thing I had done with Simple CSV’s: iterated through the data, added it to a Sproxy collection and threw it at the API.

Eh voila - instant data load.

Truth be told, I would rather not have had to do it this way. But when all else failed, it was nice to have an extra tool in my kit.

You can find Cloud Converter over on Google Code or on Developer.Force.com.

Here’s a follow up to yesterday’s webinar.  I’ve recorded step by step how to add Cloud Converter as a web tab in your org. 

An updated version of Cloud Converter is available this morning. It includes several new and useful features.

• Upload from XLS now allows multiple tabs in your source document.
• Includes both Simple and Advanced options for import.  Simple is the same as it ever was.  Advanced is all new.
• Edit Object labels and plurals in Advanced View.
• Create External IDs out of text fields in Advanced View.
• Populate the standard "Name" field with whatever source data you like.
• Create Picklist fields and populate Picklist values in Advanced View.
• Create Lookups to other objects and resolve relationships in Advanced View.
• Now hosted on a "Large" EC2 instance with SSL / HTTPS.
• Now has a fancy new domain name.

Here’s a video walk through:

A couple of events you might be interested in:

• May 28, 2009 - Salesforce Webinar - Complete!
• Friday, June 5, 2009 - Model Metrics Webinar

The new Web Tab URL is:

https://cloudconverter.modelmetrics.com/mmimport/home.action?s={!$Api.Session_ID}&u={!$Api.Partner_Server_URL_150}

Contact the author at rcarlberg@modelmetrics.com or @ReidCarlberg

I’m on a quest to eliminate the term “resource” as a synonym for another human being.  Why?  Simple: everything I do is about people. Everything succeeds or fails based on the people involved.  The term “resource” feels like an attempt to whitewash this fact, to neutralize it.  And that’s exactly the opposite of what I want.

As a side note, I don’t think I’m alone in this.  Although “human resources” is still used quite a bit, leading companies talk of “human capital” and “talent management”.  Are these perfect? No.  But they’re closer.

What do I want?  I want people who are fired up. I want people who are high energy, who are engaged – people who are on a mission. And by this I mean both the people I recruit to join the Model Metrics team and the customers we work with. “Resource” to me feels like someone who “can” do something.  I want a person who wants to do that thing.  When a person wants to do something – whatever that thing is – they do it better.  No comparison. 

So you bring your passions and I’ll bring mine.  Who knows what we can accomplish together.  Whether we need to change the world or just make a necessary process more efficient, I’m up for it.  Are you?
 

Contact Reid by email (rcarlberg@modelmetrics.com) or Twitter (@ReidCarlberg).

I’ve been working on a new feature for Cloud Converter, the ability to import an app from an Excel spreadsheet. Here’s a walk through. You can use this for free, link code at the bottom.

You can add this to your org — DE, EE, UE — by creating a web tab with this URL:

http://ec2-75-101-163-49.compute-1.amazonaws.com:8080/mmimport/home.action?s={!$Api.Session_ID}&u={!$Api.Partner_Server_URL_150}

Note that this is a beta release — you should treat it as such. I recommend you try it out on a dev org or in a sandbox before doing something in a production org.

Also, you can see it’s hosted over on Amazon Web Services. It’s always possible that the URL will change to something more Model Metrics Esque when it goes GA at some unknown point in the future.

One of the things I like about Salesforce.com and the Force.com platform is that they enable people to do more while talking less.

Let me clarify: people still get to talk, but they get to talk less about what they’re trying to do on the platform.  They’ll probably talk more about other, unrelated stuff, once freed from talking about their business tools — but that’s a good thing.

So what do I mean?

If you want to add a workflow and there’s debate about how to do it, you can just go build it and show people what you mean.

If you want to build a new application, instead of debating should it be .NET or Java, or should we use Dojo or Ext.js — you can just go build it.  

If you want to deploy a fancy new web service, instead of debating SLAs or encryption or authentication requirements — you just go built and the platform does the rest.  

You can talk about functionality — the what, not the how.

Yeah, I’ve consumed just about all the Kool Aid I could possibly find on all this but don’t let that fool you — these are real benefits.

So my Friday thought is this: Talk less about the stuff that doesn’t matter.  Do more of the stuff that does.  And enjoy the day — it’s beautiful!