John summarized it well. I'm not sure what more of an answer you're looking for. But I'll overexplain like I usually do. The answer to your question of whether command prompt switches are preferred over SQL queries, it depends on perspective. From Blue Prism's (the company) perspective, yes, using CLI is better because it uses the product the way it was intended to be used. From a developers perspective, no, using SQL queries is better because far more information can be retrieved and direct database queries are far more performant than the CLI commands such as to AutomateC. From your client's Security team, yes, the CLI is better over SQL queries because anytime you say 'access to the production database', any normal person would be apprehensive to that.
All that said, I have seen direct database queries work quite well, and unless you're doing a ton of queries constantly, I doubt you'll see any performance issues with the database performing its normal tasks for database, runtime resource, and interactive client communication or internal tasks and what not. Still, though, you might want to get a DBA involved to stress test a test environment using your queries first and ensure that it's not going to produce unwanted results. There's also the concern that there can be some kinds of sensitive information in the database, such as passwords (even if encrypted), so it's not something to decide purely based on the level of performance that you need.
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Dave Morris
Cano Ai
Atlanta, GA
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Dave Morris, 3Ci at Southern Company
