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Activity › Forums › Salesforce® Discussions › What are the uses of big objects in Salesforce?

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  • Avnish Yadav

    Member
    August 28, 2018 at 7:55 AM

    Hi Shradha,

    Big objects let you store and manage massive amounts of data on the Salesforce platform.

    Big objects capture data for use within Lightning Platform and are accessible via a standard set of APIs to clients and external systems. What differentiates big objects is that they have been built to provide consistent performance whether there are 1 million records, 100 million, or even 1 billion records. This scale is what gives big objects their power and what defines the features that are provided.

    There are two types of big objects.

    Standard big objects — Objects defined by Salesforce and included in Salesforce products. FieldHistoryArchive is a standard big object that stores data as part of the Field Audit Trail product.

    Custom big objects — New objects that you create to store information unique to your org. Custom big objects extend the functionality that Lightning Platform provides. For example, if you’re building an app to track product inventory, create a custom big object called HistoricalInventoryLevels to track historical inventory levels for analysis and future optimizations.

    Thanks.

  • Anjali

    Member
    September 11, 2018 at 1:36 PM

    Hi Shradha,

    You can use big objects to store different kinds of data, big objects were created to tackle a few specific scenarios which are-

    360° View of the Customer-You’ve got a lot of customer information you want to store. From loyalty programs to transactions, order, and billing information, use a custom big object to keep track of every detail.

    Auditing and Tracking-Keep a long-term view of your users’ Salesforce usage for analysis or compliance purposes.

    Historical Archive-Maintain access to historical data for analysis or compliance purposes while optimizing the performance of your core CRM or Lightning Platform applications.

    Querying Big Objects-Of course, keeping all that data won’t do you any good if you can’t run the proper analytics on your records. You can query big objects using standard SOQL or with Async SOQL.

     

  • chanchal kumar

    Member
    September 11, 2018 at 2:07 PM

    hello Shradha,

    Considerations in big object
    Big objects support only object and field permissions.
    You must use the Metadata API to define a big object or add a field to a custom big object.
    SOQL relationship queries are based on a lookup field from a big object to a standard or custom object in the select field list (not in filters or subqueries).
    Big objects support custom Lightning and Visualforce components rather than standard UI elements home pages, detail pages, list views, and so on).
    You can create up to 100 big object per org. The limits for big object fields are similar to the limits on custom objects, and depend on your org’s license type.
    Big objects don’t support transactions including both big objects, standard object and custom objects.
    To support the scale of data in a big object, features like triggers, flows, processes, and the Salesforce app are not available.
    You can’t use Salesforce Connect external objects to access big objects in another org.

  • shariq

    Member
    September 18, 2018 at 11:52 PM

    Hi,

    Big Objects are merely custom objects but with massive data handling capabilities. They can store at least billions of data in them. They are similar to custom objects in some ways but very different in others. The scale of data is what lets Big objects stand apart in the crowd.

    Just like normal Salesforce objects, Big Objects are also standard as well as custom. Example of a standard big object is FieldHistoryArchive, which stores archived field history data for Field Auditing purposes. Custom big objects are created and deployed by you using the Metadata API.

    When can you use a Big Object?

    As a massive data store, Big Objects can be a great help in many cases. Some typical uses of the Big Objects are as follows:

    Audits and Tracking purposes
    Better customer experiences
    Historical Data Archive

    Hope this helps.

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