5 Reasons to Use Heroku and ETL

ETL tools and Heroku Connect both offer bidirectional data connections to Salesforce. So it would be natural to assume that you only need one or the other for your Salesforce integration. But, in fact, each tool has its own particular strengths that make the two systems complementary.

Heroku is a software development platform and cloud service provider that empowers developers who build, deploy and scale web applications. With 140 built-in add-ons, Heroku features alerts and analytic security services for activities such as monitoring, caching, mailing and networking.

The functionality and add-ons in Heroku rely on application containers called "dynos," which are used to provide real-time services. In terms of RAM, these dynos range from 512 MB to 14 GB, and you can configure them to always be on or to sleep until needed.

For security, you can group the dynos in private spaces so that their backend communication is on a network that is only accessible to them. Heroku Runtime is the part responsible for running web applications. The Heroku Runtime provisions and orchestrates the containers. It monitors their life cycle and dependencies. It also provides network configuration, HTTP routing, headers, and log aggregation.

Related reading: Introduction to Heroku Connect

Now, let's have a look at five reasons why using Heroku and an ETL service is a good idea.

1. Hassle-Free Cloud Data Integration

By combining Heroku with an ETL tool, you can easily access and prepare your data for analysis and production use cases that use data integration. Opt for a no-code drag-and-drop interface, and data integration, processing, and preparation will become a breeze. Not having to deal with installing, deploying, or maintaining any software will also save you a lot of time. 

2. Data to Heroku Postgres & Heroku Connect

An ETL tool will help you pull data from, and send data to, Heroku Postgres. You can then use that data in different web applications or sync it with Salesforce via Heroku Connect. This allows you to extract and aggregate valuable data from multiple sources. Then you can transform and clean the data before sending it to Heroku Postgres. 

Postgres is an open-source object SQL relational database that supports user-defined data types and stored procedures in many languages.

Heroku Connect enables administrators to set up syncs between tables in the Heroku Postgres database and Salesforce objects. If the sync is unidirectional, Heroku Connect replicates changes in your Salesforce database to the Heroku Postgres database.

Related reading: BI Tool Integrations for Heroku Postgres

3. Use Heroku and ETL to Enrich Your Salesforce Data

Heroku offers a high-performance Salesforce integration. The right ETL solution will let you extract data from, and load data to, your Salesforce accounts using a range of data sources and transformations. This enables you to enrich the data in your Salesforce and empower your Salesforce users with valuable information.

Related Reading: Integrate.io and Heroku Connect: A Complete Salesforce Integration Solution

4. Let Your DevOps Focus on Adding Business Value

Heroku allows the developer to focus on code instead of infrastructure, which enhances the dev team's productivity. The same goes for convenient ETL solutions; if you opt for a low- or no-code tool, you save can valuable time for the dev team — time that they can instead spend on other priorities.

The Heroku architecture also reduces downtime during system updates, which removes a lot of friction in development processes and workflows. Heroku integrates with Github and supports most languages, such as Java, JSON, Ruby, PHP, Node.js, and Scala.

5. Out-of-the-Box Integrations and Data Transformations 

A good ETL solution will allow you to implement a wide range of data transformations right out of the box and without having to do any coding. You'll be able to integrate data from multiple sources into a single data pipeline, and you'll be able to aggregate, filter, and sort data sets.

Combining Heroku and ETL enables you to apply complex functions to your information: IP2Location functionality, automatic user-agent string parsing, automatic query string parsing, date math, string functions, rank, and sample data sets. You can also clone and unify data sets and data pipelines.

The Heroku Dashboard is the web interface used for the Heroku platform. It's intuitive and user-friendly, and it provides UI support for specific tasks like configuring add-ons, viewing app metrics, creating pipelines, and configuring deployment integrations.

Heroku Connect and Integrate.io

Heroku Connect's focus is on synchronizing Salesforce data with a Postgres database. But having your data in that database is often just a first step in your integration effort. To help you get the most from your data ecosystem, Integrate.io's pipeline tools let you perform the validation and transformation you need via a simple drag-and-drop interface.

Related reading: Salesforce Integration: Integrate.io and Heroku Connect

Integrate.io integrates with an array of systems — no coding required. You can use an Integrate.io pipeline to integrate any data you have stored in your cloud system with your Salesforce data in Heroku Postgres.

To learn more about how you can leverage Heroku Connect and Integrate.io as a complete Salesforce integration, get in touch and book a 14-day demo.