I suspect, yes, you have the correct background geoprocessing, but FME is just not able to find it for some reason. I can point you to some articles that might help:

https://knowledge.safe.com/articles/315/geodatabase-formats-missing-greyed-out-or-have-unm.html

This article suggests it might be because

• FME is installed on an application server but ArcGIS is installed on your local machine.
• FME Server running with ArcGIS Pro installed

It does give some suggestions and also points us to this article:

https://knowledge.safe.com/content/kbentry/1517/notes-on-fme-and-esri-versions-and-compatibility.html

The article is perhaps useful, but there is also an interesting comment:

1. ArcGIS Pro needs to be installed with the option for all users to be able to use the application.
2. In order to allow your account running FME Server Service to use the ESRI licenses you'll need to launch ArcGIS Pro and set the license level for that user. After this is set the errors mentioned above will go away.

Is that of any use? I'm not sure if you have FME Server or not.

We do seem to have a few cases in our support database of this error, but they seem to be all with FME Server. So if nothing of the above helps then do let us know and we can investigate further.

Hi mark2atsafe,

Thanks for the tips.

I have FME desktop 2019.1 (not server) and Arcgis desktop 10.6.1 (not server, not Pro), both on local machine.

I finally sovle the issue by replacing x64 with x86 of the FME.

But FME x86 has memory limit of 4GB only.

Install ArcGIS Pro into your machine. The Geodatabase writer in FME Desktop Win64 should work after signing in ArcGIS Pro.

Thanks, but I don't have pro version.

Hi @Takashi Iijima​ / @mark2atsafe​ 

Is there any updates on this?

1. what if one does not have an ArcGIS Pro License?
2. If one has an ArcGIS Pro license, what do you do so the ArcPro's session will not expire? I've been opening up ArcGIS Pro every month (and closing it down) on my other machine to avoid this error.

Thanks

Hi.

If you do not have ArcGIS Pro, then there are some alternatives. This article lists them.

1. Use the File Geodatabase Open API Reader/Writer
2. Read and write to hosted features with the ArcGIS Portal Reader/Writer or ArcGIS Online Reader/Writer.
3. Upload and access hosted online content and files, like File Geodatabase, with the EsriArcGISOnlineConnecter .

This article by Bruce at Esri might also be of use.

I'm not sure what the problem is with the need to reopen ArcGIS every month. I've looked at our ArcGIS Pro FAQs and don't see it mentioned. If it occurs on a monthly basis, then I suspect that it might be your ArcGIS license just expiring naturally. I assume your IT team just has something in place to stop you being logged in permanently. In that case, I don't know that there's much FME could do. One thought is, if you have some sort of API access to ArcGIS, then the API probably has a call to refresh a license. You could put a HTTPCaller inside a workspace to hit that endpoint and cause a license refresh. That's a bit of a guess on my part, but I think there's the possibility there.

I hope this helps. If you find you still have to stop/start ArcGIS for unexplained reasons, and it's not just a license timeout on your end, then please do contact our support team and we can investigate it further,

Regards

Mark

The one question I have is what type of license you are using. I understand there are different types: fixed, floating, and named user. I thought licenses would be obtained automatically either way, but I wouldn't be surprised if you had a timeout set in some way.

Floating = FME

Named User = ArcGIS Pro thru SSO

Right, I think because it's a named user license that there might be an expiry/timeout. Can you check on your end about that? And if that's not the case then I can take it up with our developers.

Yes there is an expiry of the login. I think it expires overnight.