Spatial data is usually available in many different file formats as many GIS tools use their own proprietary formats for managing this data, so it is very important to understand how to load all these different formats of spatial data into Oracle Spatial. Many ETL tools and data loaders support Oracle Spatial as both input and output format. In this chapter, we looked at different methods for loading the spatial data into Oracle Spatial including simple CSV files to the most common file formats. We also show how to load and generate data in formats that are very common in web mapping applications. This chapter also described issues related to the storage of geometry data in Oracle Spatial. Sometimes it is beneficial to understand the data layout in Oracle Spatial tables, and this was explained with concepts like spatial clustering.
Once the data is loaded into the database, it is now ready for use with applications. Oracle provides many other database features that can be used to...