I see a lot of colleagues running workspace with featurecaching on, not knowing what it does or how to turn it on or off and complaining about performance or cache issues. I would disable it by default in the installation.

Also consider voting for this Idea: https://knowledge.safe.com/content/idea/84763/run-with-feature-caching-as-workspace-parameter.html

Hmm, seems unrelated. But I voted anyway :D

Sorry - wrong link https://knowledge.safe.com/content/idea/84763/run-with-feature-caching-as-workspace-parameter.html

If it is not important for the user or customer to see or edit the contents of the workspace I guess you could ask them to run it in FME Quick Translator? This will allow them to run the Workspace and amend any User Parameters at runtime, but it won't run with Feature Caching switched on.

si

I like this suggestion. Thanks, hopefully in a lot of cases this will do the trick. I'll have to do some more testing with it.

Just if anyone is interested here is a bit of python which tests if cache mode is on. Interested in feedback, I'm pretty fresh with Python and have no clue on best practice really. 

#Makes a call to the windows registry to get the current setting on the "Full inspection mode" entry. works with 2.7 and 3.4+
#Intened use is when you need to have a user run the workspace on FME desktop (windows only) with feature caching diabled.
#In addition the script then checks to see the parent process as the caching is only important if called from workbench.
import fme
import fmeobjects

try:
    from winreg import *
    mod=1
except:
    try:
        from _winreg import *
        mod=1
    except:
        mod=0
try: 
    from subprocess import getoutput
    import os
    sub=1
except:
    sub=0
def processFeature(feature):
    if mod ==1:
        try:
            aReg = ConnectRegistry(None,HKEY_CURRENT_USER)
            aKey = OpenKey(aReg, r"Software\\Safe Software Inc.\\FME Workbench")
            val='unknown'
            #loop through all workbench settings in registry. Loop used because depending on FME version  the Full inspection mode index could be different
            for i in range(1024):
                try:
                    asubkey_name=EnumKey(aKey,i)
                    asubkey=OpenKey(aKey,asubkey_name)
                    if asubkey_name == 'Settings':
                        val=QueryValueEx(asubkey, "Full inspection mode")
                except:
                    break
            if 'true' in val:
                inspection = 'On'
            elif 'false' in val:
                inspection = 'Off'
            else:
                inspection = 'Unknown'
            feature.setAttribute('cacheMode', inspection)
        except: 
            feature.setAttribute('cacheMode', 'unknown')
    else:
        feature.setAttribute('cacheMode', 'unknown')
        
    if sub==1:
        try:
            #check for parent process - if being run on FME Server or via Quick Translator then cache mode it not important
            pid = os.getppid()
            #print(pid)
            process_info = getoutput('wmic process where "ProcessID={}" get Caption'.format(pid))
            process_info = str(process_info)
            if 'fmeworkbench' in process_info:
                pname = 'workbench'
                feature.setAttribute('parentProcess', pname)
            else: 
                pname = 'not_workbench'
                feature.setAttribute('parentProcess', pname)
                #print(pname)
        except:
            feature.setAttribute('parentProcess', 'unknown')
    else:
        feature.setAttribute('parentProcess', 'unknown')