13/04/2024, 00:00 Salesforce Data Cloud Model Explained - CloudKettle

August 31, 2023 Enterprise Sales and Marketing, Marketing

Automation, Startup Sales and Marketing
Salesforce Data Cloud Model Explained
by Eliot Harper

Introduction
While many Salesforce products including Sales Cloud, Service Cloud,
Education Cloud, Health Cloud and other Salesforce industry clouds
are built on a common ‘core’ platform that share the same datastore
(an Oracle relational database), Data Cloud uses a very different
architecture and technology stack from other Salesforce ‘Clouds’. This
post explains the data models and related concepts used by the
platform.
Starting with the storage layer, Data Cloud includes multiple services,
including DynamoDB for hot storage (so data can be supplied fast),
Amazon S3 for cold storage, and a SQL metadata store for indexing all
metadata. As a result, Data Cloud can provide a petabyte-scale data
store,
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The physical architecture in Data Cloud is represented as a set of data

objects and understanding these is key, as it forms the foundation in
how data is ingested, harmonized and activated in the platform.

Data Source
A Data Source is the initial data layer used by Data Cloud. A Data
Source represents a platform or system where your data originates
from, outside of Data Cloud. These sources can either be:
Salesforce platforms including Sales Cloud, Commerce Cloud,
Marketing Cloud and Marketing Cloud Personalization
Object storage platforms including Amazon S3, Microsoft Azure
Storage and Google Cloud Storage
Ingestion APIs and Connector SDKs to programmatically load
data from websites, mobile apps and other systems
SFTP for file based transfer
Data Stream
A Data Stream is an entity which can be extracted from a Data Source
— for example, ‘Orders’ from Commerce Cloud, ‘Contacts’ from Sales
Cloud, or ‘Subscribers’ from Marketing Cloud. Once a Data Source is
connected to Data Cloud, Data Streams provide paths to the
respective entity and require a category to be assigned; either Profile,
Engagement, or Other. As a result, a single Data Source can contain
multiple Data Streams.
Data Source Object
A Data Stream is ingested to a Data Source Object or ‘DSO’. This object
provides a physical, temporary staging data store that contains the
data in its raw, native file format of the Data Stream (for example, a
CSV file). Formulas can be applied to perform minor transformations
on fields at time of data ingestion.
Data Lake Object
The next data object in the data flow is the Data Lake Object or ‘DLO’.
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users to prepare their data by mapping fields and applying additional

transformations. Similar to the DSO, this object also provides a physical
store and it forms the product of a DSO (and any transformation).
DLOs are typed, schema-based, materialized views that reside in
storage containers in the data lake (Amazon S3), generally as Apache
Parquet files; an open-source, column-oriented file format designed for
efficient data storage and retrieval files. On top of this, Apache Iceberg
provides an abstraction layer between the physical data files and their
table representation.
The adoption of these industry standard formats are worth noting, as
these file formats are widely supported by other cloud computing
providers, and as a result, enable external platforms to integrate to
Data Cloud with a zero-copy architecture, for example, Snowflake.
Data Model Object
Unlike DSOs and DLOs which use a physical data store, a Data Model
Object, or ‘DMO’, enables a virtual, non-materialized view into the data
lake. The result from running a query associated with a view is not
stored anywhere and is always based on the current data snapshot in
the DLOs. Attributes within a DMO can be created from different Data
Streams, Calculated Insights and other sources.
Unlike Data Streams, DMOs don’t have a first-class concept of
category. Instead, the category are inherited from the first DLO
mapped to a DMO. After the DMO inherits a category, only DLOs with
that same category can map to it.
Similar to Salesforce objects, DMOs provide a canonical data model
with pre-defined attributes, which are presented as standard objects,
but custom DMOs can also be created (referred to as custom objects).
And similar to Salesforce objects, DMOs can also have a standard or
custom relationship to other DMOs, which can be structured as a one-
to-one or many-to-one relationship. There are currently 89 standard
DMOs in Data Cloud and continues to grow in support of other entity
use cases.
DMOs are organized into different Data Object subject areas, including:
Case for service and support cases
Engagement for engagement with an Individual, like email
engagement activity (send, open, click)
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Party for representing attributes related to an individual, like

contact or account information.
Privacy to track data privacy and consent data privacy
preferences for an Individual.
Product to define attributes related to products and services
(goods)
Sales Order for defining past and forecast sales by product
For example, the diagram below indicates the different DMOs used in
the Sales Order Data Object which uses the following DMOs:
Sales Order for information around current and pending sales
orders
Sales Order Product for attributes related to a specific product or
service
Sales Store representing a retailer
Order Delivery Method to define different order and delivery
methods for fulfillment
Opportunity to represent a sale that is in progress
Opportunity Product to connect an Opportunity to the Product
(or Products) that it represents.

Sales Order Subject Area in Data Cloud (source:

architect.salesforce.com)
Data Spaces
Data Spaces provide logical partitions and a method of separating data
between different brands, regions or departments, limiting data to
users,
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Additionally, Data Spaces can be used to align with a Software

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Development Lifecycle or SDLC, where you can stage and test Data
Objects in a separate environment, without impacting production data.
As illustrated below, Data Sources, Data Streams and and DLOs can be
made accessible across Data Spaces, while DMOs and other platform
features are isolated to users, based on permission sets.

Data Spaces in Data Cloud (source: help.salesforce.com)

Conclusion
Due in part to advancements and the drop in storage costs, companies
now have gargantuan datasets at their disposal. Every time a customer
makes a purchase, opens an email, or even simply views a web page,
these engagement events can be captured and stored, which if you
can organize properly, enables you to understand your customers,
predict their needs, personalize interactions, and much more.
But like other SaaS vendors, a core challenge for Salesforce is the
success of its original platform created more than 20 years ago, which
was really designed for a different era and runs on a competitor’s
platform. One of the main challenges that Salesforce has faced with its
database and platform architecture is that it doesn’t handle voluminous
or “big” data well. Data Cloud addresses the paradigms associated
with its core architecture and relational databases, through a well
considered architecture that addresses limitations associated with
relational databases. Data Cloud is set to form the backbone of the
Salesforce platform to support the data needs of their customers and
product line through the next two decades.
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If you would like to learn more about how to implement and integrate
Salesforce Data Cloud in your organization following best practices,
reach out today.

by Eliot Harper

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