title: Thinking of learning Maven
body: <p>I have a side project I do = in Java. It's a pretty straight-forward webapp. It runs in Tomcat on a Linux Server and  uses a MySQL database. The majority of the code was written with the Spring Framework. It has a lot of Unit Tests in place. When I'm coding it's in  Eclipse. When I deploy the application I run a few shell scripts to move a WAR file to the web server, do Database updates, and make changes to apache configs. I'm the only developer working on it, and right now it's only deployed to 1 environment(production), although some day I might want to have a testing or staging environment as well. I use SVN version control, via the Eclipse plug-in.</p>
  
  <p>I'm always hearing about people using Maven for their projects. Since so many people are using it, I'm saying to myself it must be good. I'd like to learn it in my spare time. The only thing is I'm not quite sold on why I'd want to use Maven? Does my first paragraph sound like a project appropriate for Maven? Does it have any specific advantages for a project that interacts with a Database?</p>