Introducing SOAP API
Salesforce provides programmatic access to your org’s information using simple, powerful, and secure application programming interfaces. To use this document, you should have a basic familiarity with software development, Web services, and the Salesforce user interface.
Any functionality described in this guide is available if your organization has the API feature enabled. This feature is enabled by default for Performance, Unlimited, Enterprise, and Developer Editions. Some Professional Edition organizations may also have the API enabled. If you cannot access the features you see in this guide, contact Salesforce.
When to Use the SOAP API
The Salesforce prebuilt applications provide powerful CRM functionality. In addition, Salesforce provides the ability to customize the prebuilt applications to fit your organization. However, your organization may have complex business processes that are unsupported by the existing functionality. When this is the case, the Lightning Platform includes a number of ways for advanced administrators and developers to implement custom functionality. These include the SOAP API, Apex, and Visualforce.
SOAP API
Use SOAP API to create, retrieve, update or delete records, such as accounts, leads, and custom objects. With more than 20 different calls, SOAP API also allows you to maintain passwords, perform searches, and much more. Use SOAP API in any language that supports Web services.
REST API
REST API provides a powerful, convenient, and simple REST-based web services interface for interacting with Salesforce. Its advantages include ease of integration and development, and it’s an excellent choice of technology for use with mobile applications and web projects. However, if you have many records to process, consider using Bulk API, which is based on REST principles and optimized for large sets of data.
Bulk API
Bulk API is based on REST principles and is optimized for loading or deleting large sets of data. You can use it to query, queryAll, insert, update, upsert, or delete many records asynchronously by submitting batches. Salesforce processes batches in the background.
SOAP API, in contrast, is optimized for real-time client applications that update a few records at a time. You can use SOAP API for processing many records, but when the data sets contain hundreds of thousands of records, SOAP API is less practical. Bulk API is designed to make it simple to process data from a few thousand to millions of records.
Metadata API
Use Metadata API to retrieve, deploy, create, update, or delete customizations for your org. The most common use is to migrate changes from a sandbox or testing org to your production environment. Metadata API is intended for managing customizations and for building tools that can manage the metadata model, not the data itself.
The easiest way to access the functionality in Metadata API is to use the Force.com IDE or Ant Migration Tool. Both tools are built on top of Metadata API and use the standard Eclipse and Ant tools, respectively, to simplify working with Metadata API.
Force.com IDE is built on the Eclipse platform, for programmers familiar with integrated development environments. Code, compile, test, and deploy from within the IDE.
The Ant Migration Tool is ideal if you use a script or the command line for moving metadata between a local directory and
0 Comments