Force.com Web Service Connector</a> (WSC) is a high performance web services stack that is much easier to implement than the "tried and true" Force.com Web Services API. Here's a quick command line app you can use as a starter application. This class simply creates a new Account and then queries for the 5 newest Accounts by created date.
To get started, download wsc-18.jar from the WSC project's download page to your desktop (any location will do). Now log into your Developer org and download the Partner WSDL (Setup -> App Setup -> Develop -> API) to your desktop as "partner.wsdl". Now we'll need to generate the stub code from the Partner WSDL. Make sure you have Java 1.6 installed and open a command prompt. Now run wsdlc on the Partner WSDL you just downloaded (detailed instruction are here):
java -classpath wsc-18.jar com.sforce.ws.tools.wsdlc partner.wsdl partner.jar
This will create a "partner.jar" file on your desktop. If you are using a Sandbox instead of a Developer or Production org, here are instructions for running wsdlc as there are a few issues. Your console should look similar to:
Note: You can also simply download the partner-18.jar and bypass the steps above to generate the partner.jar.
Now create a new Java project in Eclipse, add the wsc-18.jar and partner.jar files to your build path and copy the code below. You'll need to add your username and password/security token before you run the code. Running the code should produce output similar to:
Here's the starter code for the application.