Hi FME'ers,

Your challenge this week, should you have chosen to accept it, was to pit your knowledge against that of Shelley Schoen, a senior developer at Safe.

Let's see the correct answers and what Shelley got right...

1) What does the ParameterFetcher transformer do?

• Fetch the name of a user parameter
• Fetch the value of a user parameter
• Fetch the type of a user parameter
• Fetch the default value of a user parameter
• Stops FME trying to make Fetch happen

This one's straight out of our training manual - literally:

As you can see, the ParameterFetcher fetches the value of a user parameter. Imaginary bonus point if you get the film reference in the list of possible answers.

Shelley's Answer: Fetch the value of a user parameter (Correct)

2) Which user on the FME Community has the most badges?

• takashi
• jdh
• markatsafe
• david_r
• fmelizard

Ooh, was this a bit of a trick question? Maybe. Although @takashi has the most variety of badges (45) (@jdh, 41; @david_r, 39; @fmelizard, 25; @markatsafe, 17) what I really was looking for is the most overall badges.

In short, the FME Lizard has the most badges: 1072:

Most of these are from posting ideas for users to vote on, so it's not entirely fair in terms of community rewards, but still. The next highest is takashi, with 505, most of which are upvoted answers.

Some other items of interest:

• The rarest badge that anyone holds is "Disciplined" (Deleted own post with score of 3 or higher). Only one person has won that badge: @revesz
• Someone suggested that there be an official "takashi" badge! Or maybe a statue. He's that good!
• The Yearling badge is for active users over a year, with 200+ reputation. But it turns out that "active" means taking part in some way EVERY SINGLE DAY OF THE YEAR! I've no idea how 20 users have won this one!

Incidentally, I'm working on some new badges, to give recognition on our new community site (coming soon) to users who contributed to this site. So keep an eye out for those.

Shelley's Answer: takashi (Incorrect)

3) Which is the current version of the FeatureJoiner transformer?

• 0
• 1
• 3
• 5
• 1000

In most cases numbering in FME starts at zero or one (usually zero). However, believe it or not, numbering started at v1000 in the FeatureJoiner. A note in the transformer file states that this was to avoid conflict with other transformers containing the word Joiner.

But how could you possibly know that? Well, you turn on version number display in FME Options:

Now place an FeatureJoiner transformer and it will tell you the version number in Workbench:

Shelley picked "1" as the version number because presumably she didn't know about this oddity (and wasn't allowed to look to check)!

Shelley's Answer: 1 (Incorrect)

4) The NeighborFinder transformer has a single alias for a specific reason. What is that reason?

• To distinguish it from the NeighborPairFinder
• As a fun easter egg reference to the Australian TV show of the same name
• A mistake from the developer who added NeighborColorSetter to the wrong transformer
• To handle the non-US spelling of Neighbor
• NeighborFinder is actually itself an alias to the now deprecated ProximityFactory transformer

Many transformers have an alias. Usually it's to support a different keyword (Clumper for the NeighborhoodAggregator), or to support an old name (LineJoiner which is now the LineCombiner).

However, this transformer is one of several to have aliases to support non-US spelling. You can find this transformer by typing NeighbourFinder (with a U) just as you can find the FeatureColourSetter:

Aliases, you'll notice, are shown in italics in the Quick Add dialog.

"Lumberjack" used to be an alias for the Logger transformer, but some spoilsport removed it (boo)! I did also notice an alias that is almost certainly a mistake: EnvironomentVariableRetriever (note the extra "o").

Shelley's Answer: To handle the non-US spelling of Neighbor (Correct)

5) If I copy a workspace into the resources folder of FME Server using the upload tool, how can I run it?

• Through the server web interface (Run Workspace)
• Through the REST API
• With the FMEServerJobSubmitter transformer
• With an FME Server app
• It cannot be run at all

This is another one straight from the training manual.

If you simply copy a workspace file onto your FME Server's file system - regardless of whether it's a resources folder - you can't run the workspace. You need to use the Publishing wizard to upload the workspace, which adds its information into the Server database.

If you don't, then the workspace can't be run at all, at least not using FME Server, because Server won't know that it exists.

Shelley's Answer: It cannot be run at all (Correct)

6) Another "impossible" question from the history of FME. When features were dropped from early translations, they were said to have ended up on...

• The scrapheap
• The bonepile
• The masherdump
• The landfill
• The crudstack

It would end up on the bonepile.

My bookshelf holds just about every FME training manual ever printed, including an early one from around 2003 that talked about mapping files and had some amazingly bad clipart:

The buildings are factories. I think that the scary looking dude guards the bridge to prevent bad features passing to the writers. Features that the guard refuses to pass end up on the bonepile!

Shelley's Answer: The bonepile (Correct)

Let's see the general quiz info and scores:

• Quiz Week: 15 (Feb 10/2020)
• Number of Entries: 25
• Best Score: 5
• Worst Score: 0
• Average Score: 3.31
• Easiest Question: 1 (23)
• Hardest Question: 2 (1)

So harder again (av 3.31). Sorry. I notice that the question on community badges was very difficult. Takashi has the most reputation by far, but only one person realized that the FME Lizard has more badges (well done to @erik_jan).

Most people knew what the ParameterFetcher does (question 1). Questions 4 and 5 were also very easy (21/25 correct for both).

Overall...

• Beat Shelley: 3
• Equalled Shelley: 8
• Were Beaten by Shelley: 14

Sorry everyone, Shelley was just too good for you. If only a few more had got the lizard question right, it would have been a different story. The tally is now...

• Users 3 Safers 5

To finish up, here's a league table of your results...

... and here's a league table of Safe staff who've taken part: