I'm new to Salesforce and just started on a simple integration project that utilizes Salesforce WSDL / Java. I have a custom object with field that serves something like a history entry.  Updates to this field are always appends to its current value.  Since this value can grow in size i would like to avoid fetching the current value, do a string append then save it back. I'm looking for some options so that my java client can just send increments and have the Salesforce platform append the increment to the existing value. Is this possible to achieve with some sort of field configuration or special API? If not what are my other options? Thank you.