A concise guide for Salesforce architects on the API options available and how to match them to business needs. Covers REST, SOAP, Bulk, GraphQL, Streaming APIs, Metadata, Tooling, and AI/Analytics APIs.
Overview
An enterprise Salesforce implementation rarely stands alone. Integrations tie CRM data to ERP, billing, marketing, and external apps. APIs provide the standard contracts and patterns that make these integrations reliable, secure, and scalable.
Core API Categories
Core Data Access
REST and SOAP APIs are the workhorses for CRUD operations. Use REST for lightweight web/mobile access and SOAP when enterprise systems require WSDL-based contracts. Bulk API v1/v2 is designed for large volume data operations—choose v1 for fine-grained batch control and v2 for simplicity and speed.
GraphQL
GraphQL lets clients request exactly the data they need in a single round-trip, improving performance for rich UIs and mobile apps that require aggregated data from multiple objects.
Event-Driven & Streaming
Platform Events, Change Data Capture (CDC), PushTopic and Generic Events enable real-time, asynchronous integrations using a publish-subscribe pattern. These are ideal for low-latency sync, notifications, and decoupled architectures.
Specialized APIs
Metadata API supports deployments and environment sync. Tooling API helps with developer tooling and runtime diagnostics. Connect REST and Apex REST provide focused capabilities for collaboration features and custom business logic.
Analytics & AI
Analytics (CRM Analytics) and Einstein Vision/Language APIs allow programmatic access to dashboards, datasets and AI capabilities for vision and NLP—useful for automating insights and embedding AI into customer workflows.
Best Practices & Strategy
- Map business use cases to API capabilities—keep an API selection matrix for your org.
- Prioritize security (OAuth, Named Credentials, IP controls) and governance (rate limits, quotas).
- Prefer event-driven patterns for scalable, decoupled systems and Bulk/Batch for large data movements.
- Document and standardize integrations to simplify maintenance and onboarding.
Why This Matters
Choosing the right APIs and patterns ensures integrations remain performant and maintainable as usage grows. For architects, a clear API strategy reduces technical debt, prevents ad-hoc integrations, and provides a predictable path for scaling.
Tags: Salesforce APIs, Integration Patterns, Architect Guide.