Faced with limited budget or resources an Oracle Spatial and Graph developer or DBA may consider ETL one of their biggest pain points. Commercial Spatial ETL tools like Safe Software’s FME, ESRI’s ArcGIS, and Oracle’s Data Integrator unfortunately aren’t a real option for all Spatial shops. Shell, Python, and Batch scripts can often proliferate and become redundant if strict discipline is not applied.

If you are faced with imminent resource reductions, are struggling with manual processes and their documentation, or are just plain bored with repetitive ETL procedures, then automation via a flexible tool like Gradle should be seriously considered. Written in Groovy and developed initially as a modern replacement for the build tools Ant and Maven, Gradle is much more than a simple build tool. Its declarative domain specific language (DSL) can take advantage of all the object-oriented goodness of Groovy and Java, thus propelling its adopters into the new age of treating build and automation logic as first-class citizens in the development cycle. Another key value point in using a tool like Gradle is its polyglotism: it can interface with and call almost all existing operating systems and languages, thus maintaining and leveraging your investments in these previously disparate skills and knowledge.

In this presentation Mike Sanchez will focus on the open-source, cross-platform build tool called Gradle and how it can be used to automate and extend your existing manual processes without busting your budget, especially when used with other open-source libraries like GDAL, JTS, OGR, GeoTools, QGIS, GeoKettle, etc. Mike will also touch on reasons why automation may not be so easily embraced and offer alternative outlooks to help overcome fear-driven development (FDD).