Exporting data from Salesforce

As much as we may want to maximize the investment our clients make in Salesforce by moving data into it, we should consider the requirements surrounding exporting data from Salesforce. This may involve exporting certain data (for example, to a data warehouse platform), which typically involves an automated process being performed at a scheduled interval (such as every night). As expected, several techniques can be used to accomplish this task.

Data Export

Salesforce offers two methods for exporting data out of the box. The first is the Data Export service, which is accessible from within the Salesforce setup. Data Export can be used to manually export data weekly or monthly (depending on the edition of Salesforce you have), as well as to schedule regular data exports weekly (every 7 days) or monthly (every 29 days).

The second method for exporting data is the humble Data Loader application from Salesforce. This can be used to extract object data...