Socrata was acquired by Tyler Technologies in 2018 and is now the Data and Insights division of Tyler. The platform is still powered by the same software formerly known as Socrata but you will see references to Data & Insights going forward.

DataSync 101 with Socrata

Thom Robbins

Thom Robbins

    Making it easier to take your data and place it into Socrata is an important part of the success of any open data project. DataSync is an executable Java application that is a general solution to helping to automate publishing data on the Socrata platform. It can be used directly through a graphical interface or a command line tool.

    The goal of DataSync is to make data publishing on the Socrata platform simple and reliable. DataSync takes a CSV or TSV file on a local machine or networked hard drive and publishes it to a Socrata dataset so that the Socrata dataset stays up-to-date. DataSync jobs can be integrated into an ETL process, scheduled using a tool such as the Windows Task Scheduler or Cron, or used to perform updates or deletes in batches.

    DataSync works on any platform that runs Java version 7 (a.k.a version 1.7) or higher (i.e. Windows, Mac, and Linux). This simple, yet powerful publishing tool is designed to allow data publishers to easily update Socrata datasets programmatically and automatically (scheduled), without writing a single line of code.

    In this video we take a look at some of the challenges that DataSync is designed to solve.