@bigclyde Looks very similar to this problem (although a different error code). So check that the table you're trying to right to is actually enabled in the geodb and not just a PostGIS table.

(added the link!)

Sometimes weirdness happens when privleges set by the DBA get a little messed up so that you can get one feature class/layer that will just misbehave.

A few things to test are:

• Inspect the feature class/table in ArcCatalog using the connection credentials used in FME. Each Feature class you tell you whether you have "SELECT, INSERT, DELETE, UPDATE" permissions. This is by Right-clicking the feature class/table and looking at its Properties
• Similarly at the same time look at whether or not it is Versioned or not, and whether the other surrounding FCs/tables are Versioned or not. If it is different from the others, this is often another cause of write/update permissions issues often requiring the DBA to fix up.
• Test whether or not the Feature Class/table can be updated from an edit session in ArcMap

Thanks Mark,

I discovered by accident that the difficulty appears to have been with the table name. ‘address_node’ was not allowed. Somehow ‘aaddress_node’ ‘address_ode’ ‘_address_node’ ‘address_nodes’ and a few other variations were all ok, just not the one I actually wanted.

Also unacceptable were ‘street_centreline_future’, ‘aih_lp_pipelines’ and ‘contour_50cm’ (although ‘contour_1m’ and two dozen other ones are just fine).

I don’t see much of a pattern those names. Is the writer really that picky? Is it an ArcObjects thing?

@bigclyde I agree with @bwn, I don't think this is FME. I suspect these tables exist somewhere else in your database that you don't have permission to view or write too, or something along those lines. Perhaps talk to your DBA or Esri support to see if those tables exist. Please let the forum know if you do find anything.

I'm still don't understand the exact cause, but somehow ArcCatalog wouldn't communicate with those particular tables even though they existed in the db. At the same time it somehow locked them so FME couldn't overwrite.

The solution turned out to be: 1) generate the table with a similar name 2) from Postgres, drop the original table and rename the new one to the original name 3) from ArcCatalog, drop the new one. After that, it worked.