Sure. Here's my use case :
I am synchronizing data between my company's database (accounts and users) and
salesforce.com.
I gather data from my database and update objects in
salesforce.com periodically (once an hour in my case)
In ordinary use I do a diff between what I've already sent to
salesforce.com and what is in my own database. Then I send only the changes using databasedotcom gem. This process works fairly quickly (less than 4 minutes in my case).
Occasionally I get requests to change the business rules that apply to this sync meaning that every row must be updated in sfdc. This could happen in a variety of ways actually.
Although I can export the data into a csv file and then load it (or use a vendor's tool), it seems easier to have my code recognize this situation and then use the bulk API to load the data.
The current total amount of data is about 100,000 users and about 18,000 accounts.
It takes less than 20 minutes to upsert all this data using the Bulk API. (I used a tool that implements a Bulk API call).
It takes about 24 hours to upsert this data using databasedotcom.gem.
If there is another Ruby based solution that wraps the Bulk API then I'd be happy to use that. I couldn't find one.
best regards,
Frank