Sales force Deployment Tool ANT Tool

Sales force Deployment Tool:

Given below are advantage and limitation of tools which are used in code and configuration changes deployment from Sandbox to Production.

Advantage:

1. The Force.com Migration Tool is the Java/Ant-based command-line utility for moving metadata (Data about data) between a local directory and a Salesforce organization. Ant tool through Proxy Server for deployment edit build, package xml files code.
2. We need JAVA and ant-salesforce.jar and other library files for deployment which is open source. For this user should be aware of java technology.
3. Easy to redeploy and user can retrieve specific Objects, Fields, Validation Rule, Workflow etc.
4. Faster as compare to other deployment tool like Eclipse IDE.
5. When deploying to a production organization, all Apex test methods are run automatically. You cannot specify which tests to run.
6. We can retrieve custom field, validation rule and the workflow declare in package xml file. Same as package in java language.

Disadvantage:

1. Difficult to proxy configuration and the editing xml files like build/package/manifest etc.
2. There is no graphical user interface (GUI) for deployment and complex flow to understand deployment so it is more complex to understand. Only user should be able to run commands.
3. Connectivity - Problems connecting to an organization or polling for results. Get an error ‘Request Timeout’ or ‘Connection failed’ most of the time. This is the one the big limitation.