Validation before the deployment with ANT

We can do deployment from one org to another using eclipse or Ant migration tool.  To validate the deployments we have an option Validate deployment in eclipse. Where it does a  deployment check and never actually saves to the server. We can do same by using Ant using  A task called deployCodeCheckOnly.

   <target name="deployCodeCheckOnly">
      <sf:deploy username="${sf.username}" password="${sf.password}" serverurl="${sf.serverurl}" maxPoll="${sf.maxPoll}" deployRoot="retrieveUnpackaged" checkOnly="true"/>
    </target>

Thanks,
Naveen.
http://www.autorabit.com/

New enhancements/Features related to Developement/APIs in Salesforce Spring 15

As we know new Salesforce Spring 15 (i.e. Version 33) is  came into live from mid of February 2015. Following are the main features or enhancements related to Developement/APIs in Salesforce Spring 15.
 
   Force.com development and API Enhancements:

1.   Deploy to production without running all tests with Quick Deploy. You can now deploy components to production by skipping the execution of all Apex tests for components that have been validated within the last four days.
2. New Visualforce attributes for Visualforce map component displays locations more precisely.
3. The URLFOR function has been optimized for use with attachments in Visualforce.
4.  Submit more batch jobs with Apex Flex Queue.
5.   Use asynchronous callouts to make long-running requests from a Visualforce page to an external Web service and process responses with callback methods (aka, Long-Running Callouts).
6.   Setup test data for an entire test class and then access them in every test method in the test class using the new @testSetup annotation.
7.      Queueable Apex can now chain a job to another job an unlimited number of times.
8.       The Apex callout size limit for requests and responses has been increased to the heap size limit.
9.       List Apex classes and triggers with a Tooling API endpoint.
10.    If you use ConnectApi (Chatter in Apex) there are an extremely large number of enhancements to checkout.
11.  There is a number of new and modified Apex classes and interfaces so see the docs for details.
12.     API v33.0 has a large number of new and changed objects for you to pore over. The REST API now supports insert/update of BLOB data plus CORS support!
13.     The Streaming API now supports generic streaming for events that aren’t tied to Salesforce data changes.
14.    The Tooling API adds SOSL support and a few new objects and new fields on existing objects.
15.     For ISV there are also a number of enhancements that will make you happy and your jobs easier.

 Thanks,
Naveen.