Integration-Architect Exam Dumps - Salesforce Certified Platform Integration Architect (Plat-Arch-204)

When dealing with extremely large files, such as the 2.5 GB design files mentioned, an architect must consider the platform's file size limits and storage costs. Salesforce Files have a maximum upload size of 2 GB through most interfaces, making Option B technically unfeasible for a 2.5 GB file. Furthermore, storing numerous large files natively in Salesforce would lead to excessive storage consumption and costs.

The most efficient and cost-effective approach is Data Virtualization or Redirection. By creating a custom object to store the file location URL (Option C), the actual file remains in the performant on-premise file store. When the community user needs to access the design, they are redirected to the source system, which handles the massive data transfer. This fulfills the requirement to "view" the files without the overhead of moving gigabytes of data through the Salesforce infrastructure. Option A is less ideal because a 2.5 GB download over a standard Request-Reply pattern would likely lead to timeouts and a poor user experience.

Comprehensive and Detailed 250 to 350 words of Explanation From Salesforce Pl14atform Integration Architect documents: In the rol15e of a Salesforce Platform Integration Architect, evaluating a legacy landscape requires a clinical mapping of current system functions against Salesforce’s native capabilities, while strictly adhering to the "Constraints and Goals" provided by the business. The objective here is to maximize the ROI of the Salesforce implementation by consolidating redundant systems into the core platform.

According to Goal 2, the business intends to utilize Salesforce for Marketing, Sales, and Service processes. Salesforce is architected to handle these three domains through its core clouds: Marketing Cloud (replacing the legacy Email Marketing System), Sales Cloud (replacing the Sales Activity System), and Service Cloud (replacing the Case Management System). By consolidating these three specific functions into Salesforce, the organization achieves Goal 1, which is the creation of a 360-degree view of the customer. When these activities occur on a single platform, the data is unified, eliminating the silos that existed in the previous landscape.

However, the architect must also respect the technical constraints defined in Goal 3, which explicitly states the need to reuse enterprise capabilities built for quoting and order management. In architectural design, this designates the "Quoting System" and the "Order Management System" as systems of record that must remain in the future-state landscape. These systems likely contain complex, proprietary logic or are tightly coupled with back-end ERP systems like SAP Business Suite, making them "non-negotiable" for retirement at this stage.

Therefore, because Email Marketing, Sales Activity, and Case Management map directly to Salesforce’s primary strengths and are not excluded by the "reuse" requirement, they are the three systems that should be retired. This strategic retirement simplifies the integration architecture, allowing the architect to focus on building robust integration patterns (such as Request-Reply or Fire-and-Forget) between Salesforce and the remaining Quoting and Order Management systems.

For outbound integrations from Salesforce to an external cloud gateway like Microsoft Azure API Gateway, securing the communication at the transport layer is a fundamental requirement. While standard SSL provides one-way encryption where the client (Salesforce) verifies the server (Azure), Mutual Server Authentication (Two-Way SSL/TLS) ensures that both parties are verified before data is exchanged.

In this architecture, Salesforce presents a digital certificate to the Azure API Gateway during the TLS handshake. For production environments, Salesforce architects recommend using certificates signed by a Certification Authority (CA) rather than self-signed certificates to establish a trusted chain of identity that complies with enterprise security standards. This mechanism prevents unauthorized clients from connecting to the Azure endpoint, effectively mitigating man-in-the-middle attacks and unauthorized data exfiltration.

While a Connected App and OAuth (Option B) are essential for inbound requests where external systems call Salesforce, they do not natively secure the point-to-point connection when Salesforce acts as the client. Similarly, a federated API access model (Option A) focuses on user identity but does not address the transport layer security between the two cloud platforms. By configuring two-way SSL, Northern Trail Outfitters ensures that the Azure API Gateway only processes requests originating from a trusted, authenticated Salesforce instance, fulfilling the high security and trust requirements of modern integration architecture.

The timing of Platform Event publishing is a critical detail for an Integration Architect, as it affects data consistency and transaction integrity. In Salesforce, the default and most common behavior for publishing Platform Events from Apex is "Publish After Commit."

When an architect chooses the "Publish After Commit" setting (defined at the event level), the events are held in a buffer and are only released to the event bus after the Apex transaction completes successfully. This ensures that if the database transaction fails and rolls back, the event—which might trigger external actions—is never sent. This prevents "ghost" events where an external system is told to process data that was never actually saved to the Salesforce database.

The question implies a standard scenario where events are being "published" into the bus. In this state, the events have passed the transaction boundary. If the events were only "being published from Apex" (Option C), it doesn't describe the state of the delivery or the transaction. Option B is technically incorrect for standard event publishing logic, as Salesforce explicitly separates the event bus from the database commit to maintain atomicity.

Understanding this "After Commit" behavior is vital when designing synchronization patterns. If the architect requires the event to be sent regardless of whether the transaction succeeds (e.g., for logging a failure), they would need to configure the event as "Publish Immediately." However, in a standard synchronization use case where events are "only being published," it signifies that the source transaction has finalized, and the messages are now available for subscribers (like middleware or other Salesforce orgs) to consume.

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When data must reside on-premises due to security or compliance policies, but needs to be visible and actionable in Salesforce, the architect should recommend Data Virtualization via Salesforce Connect.

Salesforce Connect allows Salesforce to treat external data as if it were stored natively in the org without ever moving the data into the Salesforce cloud.28 This is achieved by creating External Objects that map to the on-premises data structures. For this to work seamlessly, the on-premises system or a middleware layer must expose the data through a compatible protocol, most commonly the Open Data Protocol (OData).

Option C is incorrect because Salesforce Connect does not natively support ODBC directly; ODBC is a low-level driver protocol, whereas OData is a web-based RESTful protocol designed for cross-platform data exchange. Option B is irrelevant as the data is stated to be on-premises, not in Heroku. By using Salesforce Connect with OData, the architect satisfies the "stay on-premises" policy while providing Salesforce users with real-time, bidirectional access to the data, supporting features like Global Search and related lists without the overhead of data synchronization.

When a target system experiences prolonged outages (lasting "several days"), point-to-point integrations built directly within Salesforce are prone to failure because they lack the persistence required for long-term retries. The architecturally sound recommendation is to utilize middleware queuing and buffering to "insulate" Salesforce from the target system's instability.

In this architecture, Salesforce sends the order to a middleware layer (such as an ESB or iPaaS). The middleware immediately acknowledges receipt of the message, freeing up Salesforce resources. If the manufacturing system is offline, the middleware stores the order in a persistent Message Queue. Unlike Salesforce Outbound Messaging (Option B), which only retries for up to 24 hours, enterprise middleware can be configured to hold messages for days or even weeks.

Middleware also provides sophisticated Quality of Service (QoS) features, such as "Dead Letter Queues" for manual intervention and customized retry schedules (e.g., retrying every hour instead of every few minutes). This decoupling ensures that Salesforce users can continue to create and "send" orders without seeing technical errors, even while the backend manufacturing system is down. Once the manufacturing service is restored, the middleware "drains" the queue, delivering all buffered orders in the correct sequence. This strategy provides the highest level of reliability and resilience for mission-critical business processes.

Governance and maintenance are critical when using event-driven architectures. Unlike standard objects, which can often be retrieved from the Recycle Bin, Platform Event definitions are handled with high permanence. Once an event definition is deleted, it is permanently removed. This deletion also immediately destroys any associated triggers, subscriptions, and any events currently stored in the event bus. Architects must highlight this risk to ensure proper metadata backup and change management processes are in place. Options A and B refer to specific security and monitoring features that are secondary to the fundamental architectural risk of permanent metadata loss.

To meet the requirements of minimal customization, low developer resources, and real-time visibility without data replication, the architect should utilize Salesforce Connect with External Objects and an OData connector.

Salesforce External Objects allow the OMS data to be viewed within Salesforce as if it were stored natively, but the data remains in the on-premise system. This fulfills the requirement for sales reps to see "up-to-date information" because every time they view the record, Salesforce Connect fetches the latest data via the ESB's OData endpoint. This Data Virtualization pattern is the most efficient choice for real-time history where users only need to view the data occasionally.

Options A and B involve Data Replication via ETL, which would store the order data inside Salesforce. Given the volume (15,000 orders/shift with 25 line items each = 375,000 records daily), this would rapidly consume Salesforce data storage limits and require significant custom development for the ETL logic and REST APIs. Furthermore, ETL is typically batch-oriented and would not provide the true "real-time" view requested. By using an OData connector, the architect leverages a declarative, "no-code" solution that satisfies the timeline constraints and provides immediate access to order details and line items without the cost of data storage.