Hey FME'ers,

Here are this week's quiz results. You were up against Chris, a long-time developer at Safe. He knows anything you need to know about the mechanics of FME on different platforms, but did he know the sort of odd questions that I ask?

Let's see...

1) The Workbench option to get rid of unwanted temporary files is called what?

• Purge Temporary Files
• Delete Temporary Files
• Remove Temporary Files
• Get Rid of Temporary Files
• Erase Stuff That You Don't Need

I'm not sure why we chose the word "purge" but that is the answer:

Chris' Answer: Purge Temporary Files (Correct)

2) Safe Software recently became a partner of which company?

• Snowflake
• Waterfall
• IceCube
• Earthquake
• Gasbag

It was Snowflake, as per this blog article:

Chris' Answer: Snowflake (Correct)

3) Which one of these is a Workspace parameter, rather than an FME Option?

• R Interpreter Executable
• Autosave Workspace Before Running Translation
• Ignore Failed Readers
• Display Transformer Version
• Replace Tabs with Spaces

Let's clarify what these tools are for.

Workspace parameters apply only to the workspace that is currently open. FME Options apply to FME, regardless of which workspace is open.

So Ignore Failed Readers is a workspace parameter because you can set it individually per workspace:

If I set it to Yes, and a reader fails to read data, then the workspace will continue, which can be very useful in some cases.

Ah, you say, but I see Rejected Feature Handling appears in both places:

...why is that?!

Well, it's still a Workspace Parameter, it's just that under the Options dialog you can set the default value for that parameter. So each workspace can still be different, it's just that the default for new workspaces is the same as what is set in the Options.

In other words, change it in Options and it won't affect the workspace you have open, only any new workspaces that you create.

Chris' Answer: R Interpreter Executable (Incorrect)

4) What is the copyright line that appears in the FME log file/command line?

• Copyright (c) 1992 - 2020, Safe Software Inc.
• Copyright (c) 1993 - 2020, Safe Software Inc.
• Copyright (c) 1994 - 2020, Safe Software Inc.
• Copyright (c) 1995 - 2020, Safe Software Inc.
• Copyright (c) 1996 - 2020, Safe Software Inc.

OK, so I messed up this question at first by asking about the log file. Of course, that information doesn't appear in the log file; it appears in the window when you run FME from the command line:

Apologies for that mistake.

Anyway, it's interesting because I think we generally say Safe was incorporated in 1993, and FME was first released a couple of years later. So why 1994, I have no idea!

Chris' Answer: 1994-2020 (Correct)

5) Which of these statements is NOT true about writing Geodatabase relationships?

• When writing a relationship class, origin, destination, and relationship classes must all be written by the same writer
• When reading a relationship class, origin, destination, and relationship classes must all be read at the same time
• Relationships classes cannot be created by FME, and must be created in ArcGIS
• An origin feature must be given the attribute geodb_rel_origin_oid. A destination feature must be given geodb_rel_destination_oid
• Relationship keys don't have to be OIDs or integers

A tough question here, because I know you won't all use Geodatabase formats, let alone relationships.

Anyway, here are the true answers:

• True: You must write all relationships and data using the same writer
• True: You must read all relationships using the same reader
• True: You must create relationship classes in ArcGIS (at least, FME won't create them)
• True: Relationship keys can be integers, floats, GUIDs, text - in fact, anything except dates or blobs.

So it's false that you need those attributes on the origin and destination feature. If I'm correct, you have an origin feature that has an oid (ID) number, and a destination feature that has an oid number.

Then you create a relationship feature, and it's that feature that has geodb_rel_origin_oid and geodb_rel_destination_oid in order to connect the origin and destination.

For full information, see this page on the knowledgebase.

Chris' Answer: Relationship keys don't have to be OIDs or integers (Incorrect)

6) 269 is the answer. What is the question?

• How many messages were posted to the FME community in its first year of existence?
• How many followers does the FME Lizard have on Twitter?
• In terms of popularity, the ModuloCounter is what position out of 498?
• What is the highest number of engines a user has launched on one FME Cloud instance?
• How many test workspaces are part of the FME testsuite?

I kind of like this sort of question. I hope you do too, even if it's a little... impossible! The answer here is that 269 is the number of messages posted to the FME Community in its first year of existence, as shown in this blog post:

Admittedly it wasn't a full year, but over (according to the WorkingDaysCalculator custom transformer) 158 working days and that gives an average of 1.7 messages per day! Suffice to say, we get more than that now!

But did you think it was the number of workspaces in the Testsuite? If so, you were way, way, way off:

According to this list, there are over 16,000 tests!

For the record, the ModuloCounter is #243 in popularity, and the FME Lizard has 502 followers.

Chris' Answer: In terms of popularity, the ModuloCounter is what position out of 498? (Incorrect)

Well, Chris got 3/6, so let's see how you all did:

• Quiz Week: 34 (July 6/2020)
• Number of Entries: 34
• Best Score: 6
• Worst Score: 2
• Average Score: 4.06
• Perfect Scores: 3
• Easiest Question: 1 (33)
• Hardest Question: 5 (9)

This time the "hard FME" question was the most difficult. The perfect scores this week are @srg, jamey and allwin.

So how did you do as a group?

• Beat Chris: 21
• Equalled Chris: 7
• Were Beaten by Chris: 3

A decent effort by Chris, but a loss all the same. The overall score is now...

• Users 20 Safers 7

When will I ever find another Safer that can win? OK, your table:

And ours...