Notes
In Salesforce, a "sandbox" refers to a copy of your production environment where you can develop, test, and experiment with changes to your Salesforce organization without affecting the live data and configuration in your main production instance. Sandboxes are crucial for developers and administrators to safely test new features, customizations, and integrations before deploying them to the production environment.
Salesforce provides different types of sandboxes, each serving specific purposes. Here are the common types of sandboxes:
Developer Sandbox: A basic sandbox primarily intended for individual developers. It includes a copy of the production environment's metadata but does not contain the production data.
Developer Pro Sandbox: Similar to the Developer Sandbox, but with larger storage capacity. It is ideal for single developers or smaller development teams.
Partial Copy Sandbox: This type of sandbox contains a subset of production data along with metadata, providing more realistic testing scenarios. It is useful for testing applications with real data but doesn't copy the entire production dataset.
Full Sandbox: This sandbox is a complete replica of your production environment, including both metadata and all data. It is suitable for complex testing, user training, and performance testing. Due to its size and similarity to the production environment, it's the most resource-intensive and expensive type of sandbox.
Salesforce sandboxes help maintain the integrity of your production data and allow you to ensure that changes do not cause any unintended issues before deploying them to the live environment. It's essential to use sandboxes to minimize risks and maintain the stability of your Salesforce organization.