The team at Universal Containers is building an application on Java that will interact with...

The Tooling API is the best choice for the team that wants to use SOQL queries to retrieve and make changes to smaller pieces of Salesforce metadata through their Java application. The Tooling API provides access to metadata objects such as Apex classes, triggers, workflows, validation rules, custom objects, and fields. It also supports CRUD operations, as well as executing anonymous Apex code. The other APIs are not suitable for this use case, as they either deal with larger metadata components (Metadata API), user interface components (User Interface API), or data records (Any Salesforce API).