Salesforce Object Modelling To Hub Without A Business Key?

Data Vault 2.0
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1

Hi -

We have a customer that we are implementing DV for, but they have a couple of Objects in Salesforce (tables) that do not have a logical business key (and do not live in other systems). For the list of about 30 that originally fell into this category, we were able to identify suitable business keys for all but 8. The most straightforward one is below:

They have a Project Template object that follows an associated Activity Template. A Activity template can be associated with multiple Project Templates, and the Activity Template can be associated with multiple Project Templates.

Activity Template Fields:

  • ID (uniquely generated by Salesforce, and is unique across all of Salesforce customers)
  • Name (never unique and has high potential, with examples, of it changing over time)
  • Project Template (relationship to the ID of the Project Template but not unique)
  • Is Deleted (Boolean)
  • CreatedBy/ModifiedBy (non-unique)
  • Amount
  • Duration_Days
  • Status (Picklist/non-unique)
  • Allow Uploads
  • Checklist Complete

The only unique field is the ID field. I thought about using that in the Hub, even though it feels frowned upon when stood up against DV2 standards, only because this data is never referenced in any other system (it is a part of a Salesforce Managed Package).

I also thought using a Reference Table, but after refreshing my knowledge of those from the DV2 book, that didn’t feel like the right choice either.

I still lean back to a Hub and Satellite, but then I revert to using the primary key as the business key.

This is unfortunately one table that can’t be left out, because it joins up to the related data in the information mart and is then used to create flags based on specific values. It doesn’t feel like it should live directly in the information mart, because they need to historically associate the data (what template was a project associated to in Feb 2023 vs Sept 2023, and what did that do to the flags)?

2

Hi Ronny,

Although DV says you must use business keys it might be ok in your instance to use a strong immutable key that will never change instead. USually in Salesforce there is the option of adding your own keys to the model (business keys) and appear as ___c columns for you. You will need a same-as link to resolve this.

When resolving the keys you’ll need to ensure to bring back the business key in your PITs, Bridges and Information marts.

Hope that helps,

3

Thank you for the response, Patrick! That makes sense. Unfortunately, being that this is a managed package, the client is unable to add custom fields to any Object managed by the package, so we are constrained by the developer of the package. It looks like I’ll need to rely on the ID since it is unique across all of Salesforce, and the data being stored in those Objects are not at risk of ever being reflected in another system.

4

You might need to do pre-staging then; not the best but in your situation it is probably warranted and should be tagged as tech debt you have to manage, i.e. you’d like it to be solved in your source but you do this to manage this for now.