In our Local Authority, we're considering using FME for automating certain actions that are recurrent and would make Gazetteer maintenance more bearable. We already use a Gazetteer software, but we believe that there are actions that could be more automated, and our software doesn't do.
We'd like to hear stories and experiences form users that have attempted similar things using FME, or even other ETL solutions such as Python.
I use FME to;
Run FME workspaces on a weekly basis to identify which properties do and don't have Council Tax cross references from a weekly file from Revs & Bens, the ones without the cross references need to have the CTax reference added
The same process for Elections, but on a monthly basis
I have specific workspaces that run views in the BS7666 DB but need converting to .SHP format for use in QGIS. We are a MapInfo site, so .TAB is our default file format for GIS
These are basic tasks but they are a lot quicker than manually running it via MapInfo, plus the change to .shp is so much easier in FME
More interesting is i've been able to use FME to generate a point dataset of street furniture images (which all have a UPRN) taken with a smartphone by colleagues, plus using FME to calculate the width of highways in our District for use by waste services. Although OS have this information in the Highways dataset it isn't complete for Daventry
Simon Hume
I use FME to;
Run FME workspaces on a weekly basis to identify which properties do and don't have Council Tax cross references from a weekly file from Revs & Bens, the ones without the cross references need to have the CTax reference added
The same process for Elections, but on a monthly basis
I have specific workspaces that run views in the BS7666 DB but need converting to .SHP format for use in QGIS. We are a MapInfo site, so .TAB is our default file format for GIS
These are basic tasks but they are a lot quicker than manually running it via MapInfo, plus the change to .shp is so much easier in FME
More interesting is i've been able to use FME to generate a point dataset of street furniture images (which all have a UPRN) taken with a smartphone by colleagues, plus using FME to calculate the width of highways in our District for use by waste services. Although OS have this information in the Highways dataset it isn't complete for Daventry
Simon Hume
Hello Simon, thanks for your reply. We use the database quite a lot for similar purposes as the ones you mentioned. One of the things is to compare with CTAX and Business rates info from Revs&Bens, as you do, for later manually updating pertinent references in the gazetteer.
However, we're pretty much looking forward on automating the update process when possible as opposed to doing the changes manually, which takes a lot of time. Any progress in automated updates of BS7666 database?
Kind regards,
Miquel