Batch processing

Companies and organizations that use a geographic information system (GIS) have large amounts of information stored in many different data formats. Hundreds of shapefiles, geodatabase feature classes, coverages, grids, and tables can form the backbone of the organization and are used every day.

New data can be created at a staggering rate by converting data from one format to another. The tasks required to maintain current databases and create data suitable for analysis are often daunting because of the volume of data required for processing. Programs are used to meet these requirements, since they are an efficient way of organizing data and executing operations. Programs can run outside an ArcGIS application at any time. By using an operating system's scheduling mechanism, you can have a program run at a regular date and time.