Hello FME'ers,

In this week's quiz you faced my colleague Cat from the sales team. She was quite nervous I think, and yes, she didn't score that well. But hey, the point is to have some fun and learn some interesting things about FME, so it's all good Cat. My questions can be pretty devious, and I know for a fact that other Safers got questions right by accident, so don't take it to heart.

Besides, I think the challenge of users beating both their own scores, and that of their fellow users rates pretty high - so let's check out the answers so you can see which you got right, and which wrong...

1) Which of the following is NOT a real FME transformer?

• AWSRegionIdentifier
• ClosedCurveFilter
• GMLFeatureComposer
• MeshSimplifier
• SurfaceFootprintReplacer

Every so often I come across a transformer and have to think if I've ever heard of it before! So I picked some of the rarer transformers to see if you experience the same.

The one that doesn't exist is the AWSRegionIdentifier. I don't know what such a transformer would do anyway; well I can sort of guess, but I don't see why you'd need it.

My favourite of the others is the SurfaceFootprintReplacer. I like that because it can create a footprint of a 3D feature, but also apply a particular light source position. This means you can create the shadow of an object, and it made for a great sundial project:

I shall have to revisit this one, to see if there are any improvements I can make with a newer FME.

Cat's Answer: ClosedCurveFilter (Incorrect)

2) The FME Webinar this week is what?

• How to Integrate CAD and GIS Systems
• How to Improve CAD and GIS Synchronization
• How to Automate CAD and GIS Integration
• How to Configure CAD and GIS Data Transfers
• How to Explain to Your Grandma What FME Is

I think a webinar on explaining FME to your grandma would be quite fun. But in reality it's CAD-GIS week here and the theme is Automation.

At the time of writing, the webinar is just 1 hour away, so if you read this quickly enough, be sure to sign up and watch. And for more on CAD/GIS, you can listen to this podcast involving Dale from Safe.

Cat's Answer: How to Integrate CAD and GIS Systems (Incorrect)

3) Which of these is NOT categorized as Big Data on our web site list of integrations?

• Apache Hive (Hadoop)
• Amazon Aurora
• Elasticsearch
• SAP HANA
• CouchDB

Our web site has a list of supported formats (integrations) and a bunch of categories to filter by:

So what is Big Data? To be honest, I don't know and I doubt that there is a specific definition that means one format applies but another doesn't. It's more related to the amount of data. So really these categorizations are sometimes just what we think people are using for a particular field.

Except I think we'd all agree that a 2GB shapefile doesn't qualify as big data!

Cat's Answer: Elasticsearch (Incorrect)

4) At the 2017 user conference, how did we signal that a break was over and sessions about to start?

• By sending an alert to your phone as a text message with animated GIF
• By dimming the ceiling lights and changing their color to red
• By playing a recording of Chris Hadfield's voice, over the intercom
• By hiding the coffee machines and staring menacingly at attendees
• By marching up and down the corridor, ringing brightly-colored bells

It's low-tech, but it worked. I was looking forward to being on bell-ringing duty again this year, but alas it's not to be.

I can't find a photo, but perhaps that's just as well!

Cat's Answer: By marching up and down ringing bells (Correct)

5) Which one of these differences between the FeatureMerger and FeatureJoiner transformers is NOT true?

• The FeatureJoiner generally has better performance than the FeatureMerger
• The FeatureJoiner outputs a feature per join; the FeatureMerger outputs a feature per Requestor/Supplier
• The FeatureMerger has a parameter to control null keys; the FeatureJoiner doesn't
• The FeatureMerger can do an All:All join with constant keys; the FeatureJoiner can't
• The FeatureJoiner has a list-based alternative transformer; the FeatureMerger doesn't

It was mentioned that this question caused a lot of pre-caffeine brain ache! I apologize. There are probably a few double-negatives in there that caused confusion. So sorry. Anyway....

• Yes, the FeatureJoiner generally does have better performance
• Yes, the FeatureJoiner outputs a feature per join; the FM creates a list of multiple joins
• Yes, the FeatureMerger has a parameter to control nulls; the FJ generally has fewer parameters
• Yes, the FeatureMerger can do an All:All join with a constant key:

...the FeatureJoiner isn't able to do that.

So the answer is the last one. The FeatureJoiner doesn't has a list-based alternative; but the FeatureMerger does:

Cat's Answer: Parameter to control null keys (Incorrect)

6) The newest Slack channel at Safe is #fun_crafts. Which of these IS a project that a Safer has been working on during isolation?

• Making a musical instrument out of a hosepipe and dried beans
• Making a cold smoker out of a paint can and a stock pot
• Making a stand-up desk out of an old refrigerator
• Making a duct-tape barrier to keep children out of their office space
• Making a pair of binoculars out of plastic smoothie glasses

I wouldn't put it past any of my colleagues to create any of these projects - especially creating a stand-up desk out of an old refrigerator (that's on my to-do list) - but the actual answer is the cold smoker:

I love it. That's something else to add to my summer to-do list!

Cat's Answer: Making a stand-up desk out of an old refrigerator (Incorrect)

Well. How did you do? Let's see:

• Quiz Week: 27 (May 4/2020)
• Number of Entries: 29
• Best Score: 5
• Worst Score: 2
• Average Score: 3.76
• Perfect Scores: 0
• Easiest Question: 2 (29)
• Hardest Question: 6 (5)

No perfect scores. I'm glad to see so many of you knew the webinar title. It starts in 10 minutes from now....!

Overall...

• Beat Cat: 29
• Equalled Cat: 0
• Were Beaten by Cat: 0

I'm sorry Cat. The users were just too good (or too lucky) this week.

The overall score is now...

• Users 14 Safers 7

The comeback is off again! Oh well. As always, here's your user league table:

Now I have to run and log on to the CAD webinar!

Oh, I'm going to skip the quiz next week, because it's a holiday day for us in Canada. So see you again in two weeks.