The driver supports DataDirect Bulk Load, a feature that allows your application to send large numbers of rows of data to a Salesforce instance. The driver sends data to a Salesforce instance using the Salesforce Bulk API instead of the Web Service API. Similar to batch operations, using the Bulk API significantly reduces the number of Web service calls the driver uses to transfer data and may improve performance.
Bulk load operations are accomplished by exporting the results of a query from a database into a comma-separated value (CSV) file, a bulk load data file. The driver then loads the data from bulk load data file into a different database. The file can be used by any DataDirect forODBC drivers. In addition, the bulk load data file is supported by other DataDirect product lines that feature bulk loading, for example, a DataDirect Connect for ADO.NET data provider that supports bulk load.
Suppose that you had customer data on a Salesforce server and need to export it to a DB2 server. The driver would perform the following steps:
1. Application using Salesforce driver sends query to and receives results from Salesforce server.
2. Driver exports results to bulk load data file.
3. Driver retrieves results from bulk load data file.
