Think Like an Integration Architect

Chapter 1 of Integration Architect, Part 1: Understanding Integration (See). Next: The Client and Server.

Integration has more pieces than any other architecture domain. More protocols, more APIs, more acronyms, more ways for two systems to talk and more ways for them to stop talking. That’s why people walk into this class nervous, and it’s why I start the course here: not with a protocol, but with how an integration architect thinks.

And if you’re a Salesforce admin, you’re closer than you think. If you’ve run Data Loader, created an integration user or approved an app in your org, you’ve already done integration. This chapter takes what you already touch and shows it to you the way an architect sees it.

The ideas in this chapter

• Everything is knowable. Keep breaking it down into smaller pieces. However tangled the enterprise diagram, each arrow is a single building block, and every block is simple.
• Zoom out, then zoom in. Start at 30,000 feet with the whole landscape, then pick one arrow and land on it: two systems, one conversation.
• Ask every arrow the same questions: who calls whom, how much, how often, and what happens when it fails. Where do I log it, what do I tell the user, and how do I retry?
• Admins already own integrations: the load tools, the integration user, credentials, and the apps they approve. Today the gateway for anything new is the External Client App.
• An arrow can mean who starts the call or which way the data moves, and the two can point opposite ways. In this course, the arrow starts at the system that opens the connection, and the label says what moves.
• Requirements are declared or implied. The client won’t ask for error handling, or for the volumes of year three. They’ll expect them. The architect finds the implied ones before go-live.
• Every arrow crosses a boundary between owners, and one side will change. Decide early where each side’s responsibility stops.
• Plan for failure. The pathway goes down more often than the system. Know what happens to the data, how the users are told and how it comes back after a minute, an hour, a day and a weekend.

The path through this chapter

Six modules, each standing on its own.

1. Everything Is Knowable. The Lego space station, 30,000 feet and landing, the four questions on one arrow, learning the language, and how the course climbs: See, Design, Direct.
2. You’re Already Doing Integration. The doors admins have already opened, the gateway’s new name, and why the approve button is an integration decision.
3. Every Arrow Is a Decision. Two meanings, one drawing; why it matters which one you mean; and how this course draws its arrows.
4. The Building Nobody Described. The blueprint and the trades, declared and implied requirements, seeing errors before they happen, and a three-year horizon.
5. Owners, Boundaries and Change. Every arrow crosses a boundary; the standard API or a contract you own; and the change you don’t control.
6. Plan for Failure. Normal time and failure time; a minute, an hour, a day, a weekend; and the point where it becomes data loss.

Each idea here is a seed. The client and the server are chapter 2, the landscape chapter 5, requirements chapter 6, bulk chapter 10, events chapter 11 and recovery chapter 13.

When you’ve finished, check yourself with the chapter study guide: a checklist for the exam, the habits beyond it, the words to know, and a few questions.

What an architect decides here

• What’s on the landscape, and which arrow to zoom in on first.
• What each arrow means, and which system starts it.
• Which implied requirements to write down, so they become declared.
• Where each side’s responsibility stops, and how changes are announced.
• What happens when each arrow stops, for a minute, an hour, a day and a weekend.

Beyond the exam: AI can write an integration in seconds, and it can turn one short requirement into a long list of questions. It can’t tell you which questions your business cares about, or what happens on your landscape when an arrow stops. Someone still has to know every brick it’s using. Each module ends with what AI changes.

Explore

• Salesforce Help, Salesforce Certified Platform Integration Architect Exam Guide (opens in a new tab) (article 005298980), aligned to Summer ‘23, checked 2026-11-01.
• The Data Architect course, Integration and Data Movement: the same arrows, asked by a data architect.

Next: The Client and Server