Not sure about the DatabaseUpdater, but have you tried the SDE Writer or FeatureWriter in Update mode?

No idea about the DatabaseUpdater, but the Writer for Esri Geodatabases has an option for versioned transactions.

@erik_jan Haven't tried that yet but I was hopeful DatabaseUpdater would work. Thanks!

@jakeharmstrong I would recommend using the Geodatabase writer or the Geodb writer in the FeatureWriter transformer. You can use Feature Operation: Update as suggested by @oscard, or if you want more flexibility use the Feature Operation: fme_db_operation

I'm in the exact same boat as Jake here - due to use case Database Updater would have been perfect for what I'm trying to achieve - but will probably have to try a workaround using featurewriter instead.

Although the parameters for SDE in Database Updater give you the option of setting the Version Type (Transactional Versioned) - if you set them they seem not to stick.

(i.e. go back into the parameters just after you've hit ok and the versioned setting you'd just set has disappeared, and it's reverted to version from SDE).

meaning even if ou've set the Database Updater's parameters to use versioned.

You get:

2021-10-27 10:35:27| 3.2| 0.2|ERROR |Table/feature class 'FMEEDITOR.XXXXX' is versioned. The 'Transaction Type' keyword must be set to 'Versioned Edit Session' in order to write to versioned tables/feature classes

2021-10-27 10:35:27| 3.2| 0.0|ERROR |GEODATABASE_SDE writer: A fatal error has occurred. Check the logfile above for details

2021-10-27 10:35:27| 3.2| 0.0|ERROR |DatabaseUpdater_13 (DatabaseUpdaterFactory): GEODATABASE_SDE writer failed to UPDATE the following feature

n.b. table name anonymized to XXXXX for privacy