Baseline architecture: Two-way sync between a business system and database

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The baseline architecture represents the most straightforward implementation of bidirectional synchronization between a business system and a database. This two-way sync pattern supports all system combinations, whether connecting CRM systems with databases, databases with databases or even two CRM systems together. The key advantage of this approach is that it enables developers to interact with business systems through familiar database interfaces, eliminating the need to work directly with complex and often poorly documented CRM APIs.

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The baseline architecture represents the most straightforward implementation of bidirectional synchronization between a business system and a database. This two-way sync pattern supports all system combinations, whether connecting CRM systems with databases, databases with databases or even two CRM systems together. The key advantage of this approach is that it enables developers to interact with business systems through familiar database interfaces, eliminating the need to work directly with complex and often poorly documented CRM APIs.

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Bidirectional sync enables developers to read and write data from their most familiar database interface and have all updates propagated to various business systems, without having to battle against complex APIs.

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This architectural simplicity addresses a critical pain point in integration development: the combination of intricate APIs and project management overhead that frequently transforms what should be straightforward integrations from hours into month-long projects.

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While this baseline pattern serves as an essential starting point, subsequent sections of this guide will explore more sophisticated architectures that incorporate event triggers and workflow automation capabilities.

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Any updates made on Salesforce will instantly sync to the database within a few milliseconds and vice versa. Any update made to the database will be reflected in the CRM, at any scale.

This architecture eliminates complex traditional sync workflows, removing the need for manual webhook configuration, custom API endpoints, and data transformation logic. Developers no longer need to build separate pipelines for CRM-to-database and database-to-CRM synchronization, as the system automatically handles all data formatting and event processing.

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Use cases:

1. Backbone CRM/ERP integration (e.g. creating a contact in the CRM when a new user signs up)
2. Send real-time customer product usage data to your business teams
3. Engage with customers with custom messages and AI personalization
4. Build internal tooling on top of CRM data, for example a Retool app or custom internal portal
5. Manage product access right and metering from your CRM directly
6. Replace heroku connect and use a database hosted anywhere (e.g. on AWS or on premise)

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Benefits of two-way sync

• Simplify architecture and reduce onboarding costs
• Bypass complex CRM APIs
• Use familiar databases SQL interface to read + write data to CRMs and ERPs
• Update millions of records in a single query operation instead of paginating over APIs for hours
• Enable real-time capabilities for your mission-critical systems
• Ensure data accuracy and consistency to your stakeholders. Avoid silent and unrecoverable data sync issues.

Real-time and two-way sync between systems can be set up within a few minutes from a UI interface or configured-as-code.

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The technical details you don’t have to deal with:

• API authentication and token rotation
• Secret management
• Pagination logic
• Rate limiting
• Error handling
• Silent sync failures
• Datatype formatting
• Creation and maintenance of webhooks
• Data inconsistencies
• Undocumented and unreliable API behavior
• No infrastructure to manage, no DevOps required
• Dynamically switch between REST, SOAP, Bulk APIs and many other for optimal syncing performance
• Duplicate record management causing issues on upsert
• Designing a system that does not break as your data scales with your business
• Logging and monitoring
• Designing incremental syncs as well as historical data backfilling
• Resume after outage
• Managing your own code repositories
• Deployment CI/CD
• Broken API documentation