Product Review: FME Professional Suite 2003

Distributor
Safe Software, Inc.
Suite 2017-7445 132nd Street
Surrey, British Columbia, Canada V3W 1J8
Telephone: (604) 501-9985
Fax: (604) 501-9965
Website: http://www.safe.com

Pricing

Product	Single Fixed License**	Single User Annual Maintenance
Basic Suite
FME Desktop Suite	$699	$200
Professional Suite
FME Professional Suite	$1,999	20%
FME ESRI Suite	$2,999	20%
FME Oracle Suite	$6,299	20%
FME for GE Smallworld	Contact for Details
Plug-ins for FME Suites
CCOGIF (writer)	$899	20% of SLP
GenaMap (reader)	$899	20% of SLP
GDF (reader)	From $3,999	20% of SLP
GDF (reader/writer)	From $6,299	20% of SLP
Intergraph FRAMME SEF (writer)	$3,599	20% of SLP
NTX Soundings	From $899	20% of SLP

** Floating license prices also available. Overview
The Feature Manipulation Engine (FME) Professional Suite is an Extract, Transform, and Load tool for spatial data. It consists of three main components: FME Universal Translator, FME Workbench and the FME Universal Viewer. The FME Professional Suite also includes developer tools and coordinate conversion support. There are several purchasing options of FME products depending upon the conversion tools needed. The Professional Suite contains translating options for most spatial data formats except ESRI’s Arc/Info coverages, Oracle Spatial writing, ArcSDE writing and GE Smallworld. Safe Software has developed specific products suites for these data formats that include the functionality of FME Professional.

FME Universal Translator
The Universal Translator is used to move spatial data from a source format to a different output format. The Universal Translator supports a large number of spatial data formats which can be viewed at Safe software's website (http://www.safe.com/products/fme/formats/index.php). To begin translating files between different spatial data formats, select File-Translate from the Universal Translator menu or you can drag and drop files from Windows Explorer onto the FME window. The “Set Translation Parameters” dialog box will appear where you can specify the Source format and dataset and the Destination format and dataset. Users can specify a Source format and navigate to the Source data, or if they dragged and dropped a file onto the FME window, the Source parameters will be automatically set. Coordinate systems will be read from the Source data automatically, but can be translated into another coordinate system for the Destination by choosing from the Coordinate System Gallery.

Figure 1: FME Universal Translator

Once you are ready to translate the data, press the OK button on the “Set Translation Parameters” dialog box. The FME window will show the progress of the translation in the log view. The Stop button will become available in case there is a need to stop the translation. Users should be aware of the size of the files they are transforming as larger files will take longer to transform. Once the translation is complete you will see a message in the log view that says if the translation was successful or not. The information in the Log view can be saved to a log file after the translation run. You can then view the output in the FME Universal Viewer or in a software program that can read the destination format.

Figure 2: FME Universal Translator Log View

FME Workbench
The FME Workbench offers a graphical interface for accessing the FME Suite functionality. Users that want to add customizations or detailed transformations, including those that require multiple input and output formats, should use the FME Workbench. The FME Workbench can refine the source data by adding source datasets, removing a dataset, importing another dataset’s feature type definition, remove existing feature type definition, and combine data from multiple sources. The FME Workbench can also do the same with the destination data and can define the data characteristics of the destination data.

The Workbench window displays the Workspace file where the data is shown in a tree structure on the left (called the Navigator view) and a graphical layout on the right. (See Figure 3) The Log view is located along the bottom of the FME Workbench window. Workbench Transformers allow users to change their spatial data as it moves from the source to the destination. By combining transformers, a variety of translation and transformation issues can be resolved. The FME Workbench includes a Transformer Gallery that is quite extensive. Users can search the Transformer Gallery by keyword, transformer name, FME function or FME factory. The Transformer Gallery tab is located on the tab on the Navigator View next to the Workspace tab.

Figure 3: FME Workbench Window

FME Universal Viewer
The FME Universal Viewer allows users to preview any FME-supported format before or after the translation. The Universal Translator displays both the geometry and attribute of the spatial data. The Universal Viewer comes with tools to zoom in and out, identify features, and to pan the map. Users can also change the styles of the features and symbols of the spatial data. The Universal Viewer allows users to Mark a location on a map which can be zoomed to. Dynamic Attributes allows users to add new attributes to their data and users can specify filters to subset out certain features from their spatial data without altering the source data.

Conclusion
The FME Professional Suite simplifies the process of converting data among different spatial data formats. The product can translate data among a wide variety of data formats from the multiple GIS software vendors. The Universal Translator is intuitive and very user friendly. I was able to quickly and easily convert files among multiple GIS software products using the Universal Translator. For users that require advanced functionality with regards to transforming their spatial data, the FME Workbench provides the tools for performing these types of data transformations. The FME Universal Viewer is ideal for someone that needs to preview data in particular software vendor's format, but does not have access to use that software vendor’s program to view the spatial data.