WayToImport

With the experience gained in data conversion and migrations, it became apparent that certain data sets need to be refreshed on a regular basis. The most obvious example of this is replenishing the Land Base, which is usually not maintained, in house, but comes from data suppliers, be they municipalities, state/provincial or federal agencies, or independent data suppliers.

The key feature here is performance. If a process can be run in an hour versus 20, the replenishment can be more regular, and therefore have a more up-to-date land base at all times. There are other sources of data, not maintained within the GIS system itself, but required for viewing within the application, and these may require more frequent replenishment. Performance was a key factor in the design of nightly processes to keep a whole provincial set of data based on receiving two data types from each of three different suppliers.

WayToImport provides a configurable tool that allows for the feature mapping and any data transformations that may be required along the way. Source geometry data may be acquired in CAD, e.g. MicroStation or ESRI formats, and be loaded into Oracle Locator, SQL Server Spatial, or SDE data structures. Some data suppliers may change the features and attribute names in subsequent deliveries, and there is a need to have a more automated method of detecting and remapping the data for the next load.

In a nutshell, WayToImport delivers mechanisms for maintaining currency in data sets from external sources, as stale-dated data can cause problems in operational practices.