Data Modeling/Database Design25% of the exam

Record access design: OWDs, hierarchies and territories

How to open access from restrictive organization-wide defaults with role hierarchies, sharing rules, teams, territories and Apex managed sharing, what implicit sharing does and doesn't grant, and how restriction rules and View All fit a scalable model.

Official exam objective
Given a scenario, recommend approaches and techniques to design a scalable data model that obeys the current security and sharing model.

~7 min read · 14 practice questions ·

What the exam expects

  • Set organization-wide defaults to the most restrictive level and open access with the lightest component that fits.
  • Predict what parent and child implicit sharing grant on Account, and why account hierarchies and custom objects get none.
  • Design a role hierarchy around levels of data access, and decide when Sales Territories (Enterprise Territory Management) beats roles or teams.
  • Choose among owner-based rules, criteria-based rules, nested public groups, teams, Apex managed sharing, restriction rules and object-level View All.

Key terms: organization-wide default (OWD) (baseline record access per object); implicit sharing (built-in Account parent/child access); Controlled by Parent (child access follows the master); restriction rule (filters records a user can already reach); Apex managed sharing (share records written by code, kept across owner changes).

Key facts

Role hierarchy depth
Detail
Best practice: no more than 10 levels of branches
Public group nesting
Detail
No more than five levels
Sharing rules per object
Detail
300 total; 50 criteria-based and guest user
Grant Access Using Hierarchies
Detail
Configurable for custom objects only
Implicit sharing
Detail
Account children only; not custom objects; can't be turned off
Parent implicit sharing
Detail
Read-only; not granted by View All on the child
Teams
Detail
One team per Account, Opportunity or Case record
Apex managed sharing
Detail
Kept across owner changes; sharing reasons on custom objects only
Restriction rules per object
Detail
2 active (Enterprise, Developer); 5 (Performance, Unlimited)
Sources for this section (3)
  • Why is an object-level View All permission preferred over View All Data for an audit team that reads one object?
  • When is territory management a better fit than account teams?
  • Why should public groups not be nested more than five levels?
  • What happens to Apex managed shares when the record owner changes?

The questions are free to read. Answers with their sources and self-grading are included with the pack.

Keep reading with the Platform Data Architect pack

  • Core concepts
  • Exam traps
  • Worked scenario

The pack includes:

  • All 21 lessons of the Platform Data Architect guide, with reading progress
  • Interactive decision walks and step-by-step sequence steppers
  • Inline practice questions and one-click topic practice (14 questions for this lesson)
  • An official source cited for every claim
  • An AI tutor that answers from the guide
  • Unlimited timed practice exams

Practice for the Platform Data Architect exam