Custom Objects

Account and Contact cover common business concepts, but a school's Salesforce org needs to track something like "Course Enrollment," and a car dealership needs "Vehicle Trade-In" — neither exists as a standard object. Custom objects fill this gap: any business-specific data structure an org actually needs.

Course_Enrollment__c enrollment = new Course_Enrollment__c();
enrollment.Student_Name__c = 'Amara Nkosi';
enrollment.Course_Name__c = 'Apex Fundamentals';

1. Course_Enrollment__c enrollment = new Course_Enrollment__c(); — every custom object's API name ends in __c (for "custom") — this is how Apex and Salesforce distinguish something an org's team built from Account (something Salesforce built in).
2. enrollment.Student_Name__c = 'Amara Nkosi'; — custom fields follow the same convention.
3. enrollment.Course_Name__c = 'Apex Fundamentals'; — another custom field, same suffix.

Course_Enrollment__c enrollment = new Course_Enrollment__c();
enrollment.Student_Name__c = 'Ben Dlamini';

System.debug(enrollment.Student_Name__c);

1. Course_Enrollment__c enrollment = new Course_Enrollment__c(); — aside from the __c suffix, a custom object works in Apex exactly like a standard one.
2. enrollment.Student_Name__c = 'Ben Dlamini'; — new and dot notation, all identical to Account.
3. (blank line)
4. System.debug(enrollment.Student_Name__c); — logs the value. The distinction matters for naming, not for how you write code against it.