Quick Start

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.

However, the underlying calls of Metadata API have been exposed for you to use directly, if you prefer to build your own client applications. This quick start gives you all the information you need to start writing applications that directly use Metadata API to manage customizations for your organization. It shows you how to get started with File-Based Development. For an example of CRUD-Based Development, see Java Sample for CRUD-Based Development with Synchronous Calls.