It's Wednesday my dudes, and so that means the weekly quiz answers.

This week you were competing against Marc DeRosier from Safe, expert in Shapefile and Excel, but how would he do on Server, XML webinars, and "ancient" FME versions?

Let's see...

1) Which of these is NOT an option in the Shapefile output dimension parameter?

• 2D
• 3D

   

• 2D + Measures
• 3D + Measures
• Dimension From First Feature

The answer is that plain 3D is not an option:

I'm not sure why, but I suspect it's because the allowed types in a Shapefile are (for points) Point (X,Y), PointM (X,Y,M) and PointZ (X,Y,Z,optional M).

So 2D and 2D + Measures are different types (Point/PointM) but 3D features will always be PointZ, whether or not you have measures.

Marc's Answer: 3D + Measures (Incorrect)

2) There are some weird and wacky terms used in data science. But only one of these terms will actually bring up a result in a Quick Add search (either "Search Name" or "Search Help"). Which is it?

• Upsert
• Munge
• IOT
• NoSQL
• Fog

The term "NoSQL" brings up the GoogleBigQueryConnector transformer:

That's because the phrase appears in "Google BigQuery is a managed NoSQL database service":

Surprisingly, none of the other terms appear.

"Upsert" means to update or insert a record, depending on whether it exists. I'm surprised this isn't a keyword.

"Munge" is a term that means to... well, deal with, as in a "Data Munger". It's also known as "Wrangle", which also doesn't return a result. I'm not surprised this isn't a keyword, since it's less well-known.

Amazingly, "IOT" isn't a string match at all (even where it doesn't mean internet of things) in a transformer name or help, or even in the WB help docs!

"Fog" is a term as in Fog Computing (not exactly local, but not exactly in the Cloud).

Marc's Answer: NoSQL (Correct)

Incidentally, while looking up database slang I found this page, which says that ETL tools are sometimes known as "two men and a truck". It also has great slang phrases, such as:

3) Which of these can you NOT do with the FME Server View Workspace tool?

• View a workspace
• Run a workspace
• Set Published Parameters
• Switch transformers from FME names to user-defined names
• Push to a remote (version control) repository

The View Workspace tool is relatively new in FME Server, so it's a good opportunity to remind you what it can do.

Obviously you can view a workspace, and you can run it too (although it goes to a Server queue and doesn't have the same interactive view as Workbench).

You can also change the Published Parameters, which is obviously helpful if you are going to run it.

But the last two choices are what might have puzzled you.

Firstly, you CAN change the view to show transformer names defined by the workspace author:

So, secondly, you CAN'T push the workspace to a version control repository. Although that functionality is available in Server, it appears (to me) to work for the Server as a whole; i.e. you can only push all workspaces, not individual ones.

Marc's Answer: Switch transformers from FME names to user-defined names (Incorrect)

4) What strange phenomenon occurred for several minutes during the recent XML-athon webinar?

• A continuous, unexplained beeping noise
• A bird flew into Don's office
• A partial solar eclipse in the Vancouver area
• Sound was replaced with someone else's GotoMeeting
• Aliens landed and demanded to meet the FME Zipster

Perhaps this would be impossible, unless you happened to playback the webinar! Of course, it was a long webinar (what part of XML-athon don't you understand?) so I'll tell you that the beeping started around 1:10:36, perhaps in response to Don's awful pun about metadata. It seems that the worst of it was edited out of the recording, but it did go on for a long time.

It sounds like someone is on hold, but we never did find out what it really was about.

Marc's Answer: A bird flew into Don's office (Incorrect)

5) Of all the Styler transformers, which one's format also allows the same values to be set under the User Attributes tab on a writer feature type?

• DGNStyler
• ExcelStyler
• MapboxStyler
• PDFStyler
• PowerPointStyler

It would have to be a unique format, and in this case it's Excel.

Basically you can set parameters in the ExcelStyler, but you get the same set of options under the User Attributes tab. No other format (at least, none with a Styler) offers the same capability.

Marc's Answer: ExcelStyler (Correct)

Q In early releases of FME Workbench, the run button was not represented by the green play arrow of today, but which keyboard character?

• R
• !
• *
• >
• ~

Bizarrely it was the character you'd least expect and, yes, it was red to make you even less likely to click it!

Go figure.

The same toolbar also had some very strange buttons that do... well, who knows?

Hmm, on reflection the K button might have been a way to add a "constant" to a feature type; basically it supplied a fixed value for an attribute.

But I've no clue whatsoever what the hammer icon is for! Do you know?

Marc's Answer: R (Incorrect)

Well, Marc got 2/6, so let's see how you all did:

• Quiz Week: 36 (July 20/2020)
• Number of Entries: 30
• Best Score: 6
• Worst Score: 0
• Average Score: 3.47
• Perfect Scores: 3
• Easiest Question: 1 (22)
• Hardest Question: 6 (8)

A touch harder this week, yes? When the easiest question only gets 22/30 correct, I can tell it was tougher. So how did you do as a group?

• Beat Marc: 22
• Equalled Marc: 5
• Were Beaten by Marc: 3

Oh Marc, if only you'd gotten the question on Shapefiles correct! Your score would have been way better. The overall score:

• Users 22 Safers 7

The Safe losing streak is up to 9 now.

The mysterious (to me) joeri stays top with another win (only 3/6 correct, in case you're wondering) while allwin has a great method to stay top: get 100% then stop playing!

Here's the Safer league.

There may or may not be a quiz next week - we'll have to see if the community is locked down for the grand update. But I hope to have a chance to find a Safer to beat you one more time!