Salesforce.com - SOQL vs JDBC Driver
Description
You can use the following APIs to pull data from your SFDC/Salesforce.com database:
SOQL REST API queries (more details: https://developer.salesforce.com/docs/atlas.en-us.api_rest.meta/api_rest/using_resources_working_with_searches_and_queries.htm )
SQL Queries using JDBC Driver (more details: Using the JDBC Driver in Salesforce CDP ).
Notes
You can use third-party tools such as URL Encode Decode to encode your SOQL Queries.
SFDC database can be accessed either via 1)SOQL queries/REST Apis or 2)JDBC Driver. The SOQL approach is in most cases (depending on your sfdc license) free or significantly cheaper, whereas pulling that data straight from Salesforce.com ’s database using JDBC driver is licensed and requires a per-user license.
Germain supports both approach.