What Salesforce tool lets you deploy/retrieve metadata, check status of apex jobs, and check responses of REST calls?

A company's support process dictates that any time a Case is closed with a Status of 'Could not fix,' an Engineering Review custom object record should be created and populated with information from the Case, the Contact, and any of the Products associated with the Case. What is the correct way to automate this using an Apex trigger?

A developer needs to send Account records to an external system for backup purposes. The process must take a snapshot of Accounts as they are saved and then make a callout to a RESTful web service. The web service can only receive, at most, one record per call. Which feature should be used to implement these requirements?

Recently a Salesforce org's integration failed because it exceeded the number of allowed API calls in a 24-hour period. The integration handles a near real-time, complex insertion of data into Salesforce. The flow of data is as follows: * The integration looks up Contact records with a given email address and, if found, the integration adds a Task to the first matching Contact it finds. If a match is not found, the integration looks up Lead records with a given email address and, if found, the integration adds a Task to the first matching Lead it finds. * If a match is not found, the integration will create a Lead and a Task for that newly created Lead. What is one way in which the integration can stay near real-time, but not exceed the number of allowed API calls in a 24-hour period?

What is a benefit of JavaScript remoting over Visualforce Remote Objects?