In this article I will cover some basics of when to use a before-trigger vs. an after-trigger as well as how to make sure your triggers support bulk DML (Data Manipulation Language) operations and some best practices for creating triggers. There will be a part II to this article that will cover unit testing and some common trigger examples. But I do want to be clear, this is not an article about how to program so you will need to have a basic understanding of the Apex Coding Language and the tools used to develop these triggers such as the Force.com IDE . I want to start with first explaining some basics about Apex Triggers. Apex Triggers are event handlers. When a record associated with the trigger is inserted, updated, deleted, or undeleted the Salesforce.com system will "fire" or execute the trigger event. Salesforce will actually execute a trigger in two different contexts: before and after. Before-trigger events are executed before a record has been committed to t