Salesforce is customer relationship management (CRM) software that is accessed over the web. Many companies use this to track sales leads and customer characteristics, and this is stored remotely in a Salesforce "database". We have a need to report this information in combination with our local Oracle database information, and are hoping to find a WebFocus solution to that. There is a 3rd party ODBC driver available for Salesforce and Salesforce also does have its own Java API, so I believe that it "probably" can be done. I was just hoping that someone had already worked this through. If not, I'll be glad to share what we're able to figure out.

Don't know what Salesforce is but I assume it is some type of CRM application. Is the underlying database still Oracle? If so, are you looking for something (Mas files, fexes, etc.) that has already been created by someone using this software? Otherwise it's just a matter of creating your master files (Metadata option on the WF server) and writing your fexes.
If it's not Oracle, you'll need to license an additional adapter for the appropriate database and possibly install/configure a client for that database on your WF server.

Guess that answered my question while I was asking it...

If all you've got is an ODBC driver, then you can license an ODBC adapter (you don't mention your platform - you should update your profile with product, version, platform info) and set up the ODBC data source on your server (I guess I'm assuming Windows) and you're off to the races. However, I'm pretty sure that there is an underlying database such as SQL server, in which case it would be better to get the specific driver for SQL server and use the SQL Client on your WF server to access the remote database.

Well, we don't actually have an ODBC driver for it, but may be able to get one if that's the right course to take. We don't have direct access to their database, just what we're able to do through their software (I'm seeing a downside to "software as a service").

Again, I was just hoping someone had already traveled this path. I'll pursue this with the Salesforce folks to see what's possible.

I'll update my profile.

Thanks,

Jim

Salesforce.com has a full web service api. I took a quick look at them, and the "retrieve" and "query" object's response body's are self describing, and therefore directly consumable by web focus. You might want to look into that.

Jim

Informationbuilders might have a special adapter for the Salesforce application.
I know they have something similar for Peoplesoft.

I'll look into that. Thanks.

An adaptor for Salesforce would be great. However, my searches for "Salesforce" on the IBI site have not returned any hits, so I'm presuming that this is new ground.