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As @mark2atsafe has taken vacation this week, I offered to get my revenge after last weeks quiz. Therefore, this weeks quiz is all FME Server questions.  To try and make it easier, this week you'll be taking on @trentatsafe (or 'The Trentster' as he likes to call himself). Trent is an FME Desktop Expert primarily, focusing on anything Esri, databases and Markup(XML/GML/JSON). He has recently started exploring the world of FME Server to expand his FME Knowledge so he makes the perfect candidate this week.  The quiz is live here: https://demos-safe-software.fmecloud.com/fmeserver/apps/FMEQuiz  As @mark2atsafe normally gives 48 hours for the quiz, I'll aim to close it around midday Thursday (pacific time).  How did you fare against Trent?

Can we Read or Write data using FME from Fiber Manager application by SE

I generally attend the FME Quiz on Tuesdays (India time)@mark2atsafe Is the FME Quiz for this week over or it is me just facing this issue?Repository "iMark" doesn't exist or you do not have permission to Read or Run from itTxSRG

Hi folks,This week your challenger was Jen from our Server tech experts. It seemed to be a bit of a tough week, although I deliberately left out any Server questions to give you more of a chance.Let's see the answers:Answers1) Safe has subscription pricing models for various industries. Which of these is NOT a real subscription model for FME?Local Government SubscriptionForestry SubscriptionUtilities SubscriptionEducation SubscriptionAirports SubscriptionThe answer is that there is no subscription model for forestry:... at least, none yet. I suppose you never know.Incidentally, a subscription model allows you to use as much FME as you like - both Desktop and Server - for the one annual fee. It can make more sense than using individual licenses when you want to get a project underway very quickly, or want to have a better prediction of future costs.I have to also mention that the Education Subscription is for institutions to use for operations and facilities management. It's not

Hello everyone,Your Safe quiz opponent for this week is... Jen Luther Thomas (@jlutherthomas) also known by her Twitter handle of mapgirll.Jen is a "Technical Experts Team Lead for FME Server" at Safe, which means she leads one of the two support teams responsible for handling FME Server cases.A fellow Brit (there are quite a few of us at Safe) she is a frequent participant in webinars, writes blog articles, originally set up the community "Holiday Hackathons", and does a lot more brilliant things besides.She would be a tough opponent on the subject of Server... but unluckily for her I haven't included any Server questions this week! Will it hold her back? You'll have to take the quiz yourself to find out:https://demos-safe-software.fmecloud.com/fmeserver/apps/FMEQuiz

Hi All,, i'm seeing a strange issue with FeatureWriter not outputting features correctly. I've noticed this behavior at least once before, but kind of ignored it and worked around it.In this particular example, I have 1056 features that should be output and written to a text file using the CSV writer. Checking the inspector, i'm seeing the features coming through correctly. Writing to the CSV using the standard CSV Writer works fine and features are output how they should be. However, trying to write to a CSV using the FeatureWriter results in a blank text file being output.Here is the configuration of the FeatureWriter. User Attributes are set to Automatic in this case, but attempting to manually specify attributes results in a blank text file as well.   Attached in the log output when attempting to run through the FeatureWriter.

Question of the WeekThis question was asked by @dpkonofa who wonders about how to divide data up inside a workspace, when you don't know what those divisions might be in advance.Q) Is there a transformer that will split a table based on the value of a field and then let me do different processing for each output? I looked around and saw a few mentions of a "Fanout" but that looks to happen on the writer.It seems that the "AttributeFilter" needs to know the values in advance. In my case, there could potentially be thousands of values and I wouldn't know what those are ahead of time.This workflow needs to filter records based on that value and then perform a function on each classification. A) I would call this a "dynamic" process because we don't know the values of the data in advance. We can certainly handle data dynamically on a writer (the Fanout is just one aspect of that) but how can we set up multiple outputs from a transformer without doi

Is the file storing the saved settings (by settings, I mean settings set in Tools > FME Options) accessible? I would like to be able to auto-apply settings using command line tools. This could adding database connections, changing the appearance, switching python interepter etc.

When I switch computers and open up the same workspace I get errors on the web connections. So I have to reconnect to the same AGOL feature service but on a different computer.

Hi folks,This week I put you up against Stephanie from the marketing team. I gave her a bit of advantage by not being too hard-code FME. So let's get down to it and see the answers and how you did.Answers1) FME has been translated into a number of local languages. Which language is NOT listed as an available translation on the Safe website? ChineseFrenchGermanGreekJapaneseI was a bit surprised to see you all got this correct! But only a bit, because I suppose Greece is not a known hot-spot for FME. So, yes, the answer is Greece.You can see what languages we do support by checking out the tech specifications page on our web site:That has to be one of the harder pages to find, even when you know it exists; unless I'm really not looking very well.Stephanie's Answer: Greek (Correct)2) Safe's head office is located on 137A Street in Surrey, BC. What is the building number?1313963910607445221BWe are located at.... 9639 137A Street. That's on our web site too, if you went

Hello everyone,For the FME Quiz this week I've put you up against my colleague Stephanie Warner.Officially, Stephanie's job title is Marketing Coordinator, but you may recognize her most from organizing and moderating all our webinars at Safe, occasionally taking to the screen during the start or end of each event. I believe she's also responsible for creating the slide layouts for presentations, and all sorts of marketing collateral like that.Stephanie claims her "FME IQ" is fairly low, but then that's what all of the marketing team claims, and yet they're top of the league in quiz results per department at Safe!So test yourself against her here: https://demos-safe-software.fmecloud.com/fmeserver/apps/FMEQuizIncidentally, I've been asked if it's OK to take the quiz before I post it here. Yes, that should (normally) be fine. If you see the quiz is available then it just means that the Safer hasn't yet taken the quiz. I've opened it up for t

Well FME'ers,This week you were challenged by Iain McCarthy from Safe. As I mentioned, Iain is responsible for a lot of the supporting tech at Safe, but has a good grasp of FME for sure.So how well did you do. Due to an oversight on my part, I forgot to tell Iain what username to enter, so you didn't get to know if you beat him or not.That should make the results very interesting...Answers1) Which of the following is NOT a real FME format?Continuous Acquisition and Life-cycle SupportDigital Weather Markup LanguageFME Advanced Kriging Environment Neuroimaging Informatics Technology InitiativeSnow Data Assimilation SystemIt seems that quite a lot of obscure formats have snuck into FME while I wasn't watching! I'd never heard of the Snow Data Assimilation System before, although I had heard of the Neuroimaging format, with the cute shortname NIFTI.Iain's Answer: Continuous Acquisition and Life-cycle Support (Incorrect)2) Dmitri from Safe posted some photos on Twitter last week of him hold

Hello!I'm new to FME and I'm getting stupid about a simple task:I want to take the second element of list I created and write it into a new attribute (X2), which doesn't work.If I begin by grabbing the first element like this, it works:import fmeobjectsclass FeatureProcessor(object):def input(self, feature):feature.setAttribute("X2",feature.getAttribute('List{0}.X'))self.pyoutput(feature)However, If I change that code to start grabbing values by the second row (change the code to "feature.getAttribute('List{1}.X')", I get an empty output.Can anyone help with this? Or is there any other solution that fits? Basically, I have an X-Coordinate-Attribute and I want that X-Coordinate to be substracted with the following X-Coordinate in the same attribute. I thought deleting the first element and then merging the resulting attribute to the original attribute would be the easiest solution. Thank you!

Hi,I get customer calls about the (free) FME Hub StUF-Geo Vertical Message Reader from Vicrea. It’s in the Format list of the Add Reader, but it’s not selectable anymore in, as far as I have tested FME 2020.  I reproduced this issue:In FME 2019.2.3 the Format is in the selection list and can be selected.In FME 2020.0.0.1 the Format is also in the selection list but cannot be selected anymore (field stays red). Did a quick test on another FME Hub-format (PDOKURLREADER) with the same result.  This seems a problem is introduced in FME 2020.+Do we (and others) have to republish the .fds formats or something like that? Any idea what’s causing this and have a solution (workaround)?  Kind regards Krien Guijt FME Certified Professional

Hello FME'ers,For the quiz this week, I chose my colleague Iain McCarthy. Iain's job title is [quickly checks the Safe org chart] Director, Information Services. This means that's he ultimately responsible for all our IT operations, our web site development, our information security, our FME release processes, and all of our tools like the CMS and this knowledgebase.That's a heck of a lot, and not much interaction with FME directly.But... you remember that we use FME to power a lot of our internal systems ("eating our own dog food") and I happen to know that Iain is quite familiar with FME itself. So this might not be the easy win you are expecting!So... let's see how Iain did, and how you do, shall we?As always, the link is: https://demos-safe-software.fmecloud.com/fmeserver/apps/FMEQuiz

hello, where can I find a guide/manual to perform automatic transformation (using the fme) from multi jpeg files (example 120 Image of a structure to a 3d model of dwg format (to be able open directly with AutoCad and work)  

We want to run FME on a standalone batchserver, next to a dedicated ArcGIS-server. Is there a way for FME to run without being on the ArcGIS server. We want to use the FME server to run but not stress the ArcGIS server/services.

Hi everyone,I want to hatch some polygon features with symbols such as +++, I have used SymbolFiller but I keep getting rejection code (Symbol_Outside_Polygon) meanwhile my source polygon features are connected as input. I will appreciate solution on how to solve this.@jovitaatsafe @daleatsafe @lars_de_vries

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...Answers1) Which of the following is NOT a real FME transformer?AWSRegionIdentifierClosedCurveFilterGMLFeatureComposerMeshSimplifierSurfaceFootprintReplacerEvery 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 AWSRegionI

Hi, As the title says, FME is running much slower on my machine vs a colleague running the exact same process with a similar spec machine. The process took them 2hrs 48 minutes, while I had to kill the process after 4 days of running.  We tried changing the fme temp directory off my C drive and onto another and I noticed something in the log file. At the start of the process the log file states that the temp file is:2020-05-12 14:33:56| 0.2| 0.0|INFORM|System Status: 2.78 TB of disk space available in the FME temporary folder (U:\\osihfile04\\Land_Cover_Store\\FME_TEMP)However later on at the end of the log file it states:|1405.6| 0.0|STATS |Stored 51098 feature(s) to FME feature store file `C:\\Users\\jonesD\\AppData\\Local\\Temp\\wb-inspectors-vsYHBZ\\inspector.ffs'2020-05-12 14:57:24|1405.6| 0.0|INFORM|Saving spatial index into file 'C:\\Users\\jonesD\\AppData\\Local\\Temp\\wb-inspectors-vsYHBZ\\inspector.fsi'2020-05-12 14:57:24|1405.7| 0.0|INFORM|Finished saving spatial

Hi folks,I hope your week is going well. For the quiz this week I've turned back to the sales team and selected Cat Gracey as your challenger. You may know Cat from her many appearances on our FME World Tour teams, and also for tweeting occasionally as catatsafe How well does she know FME? The only way to find out is to take her on here:https://demos-safe-software.fmecloud.com/fmeserver/apps/FMEQuizResults in a day or two's time.

Today we're looking at how to write numbers to Excel, and preserve their formatting.Question of the WeekThis question was asked by @bernarddinon who wanted to know how to preserve number formatting to 3 decimal places when writing to Excel.Q) In my workspace, I use LengthCalculator to measure "Distance". I'd like to have three Numbers after [i.e. 3 decimal places]. I use Stringformatter on this attribute with Format String .3f but all value not have this setting.Someone can help me to fix this?A) There's a mix of factors here because you are calculating a number, viewing it in FME, and then writing it to Excel. Any one of those factors could affect the result you want.Let's look and see what is happening...Illustration of the IssueHere's the issue in brief.A length is calculated. Let's say it is 123.45678. This number is passed through the StringFormatter with a format set to .3f (i.e. give me a number with 3 decimal places). The result is 123.456Howev

Hello FME'ers,This week's quiz was the big one: up against Mark Stoakes from Safe. You'll know that he got a score of 4/6 - which is good, but beatable. An early comment on the quiz page said it was a lost cause for the users, but I was seeing some good scores come in and the average last week was 4.15. A repeat of that might give you a win.So let's see how you all did...Answers1) Before Automations in FME Server, there were Notifications. What part of the system was triggered by a notification and in turn triggered an action?An EventA TopicA TriggerA ListenerA GizmoSay something happened (an event) of which FME was notified (by a publisher). The part of the system triggered by this notification is a topic. The topic would trigger a publication in FME. That could run a workspace and trigger another topic to trigger a subscription to cause a notification to subscribers.Notification. Publisher. Subscriber. Publication. Subscription. Topic. Event. No wonder users got confu

OK FME'ers. You asked for it!Actually, someone literally asked if I could get Mark Stoakes to be the Safer taking part. He's not keen, but he'll do it (I guess I owe him a favour now).For those that don't know him, Mark Stoakes is a long-time Safer and FME user. He's run the Professional Services and Support teams at Safe, and now heads the FME Application Experts team. That means he's really into complex projects and scenarios. He probably even knows what the SectorGenerator transformer does - and why!Plus he knows me well, which is important to the fun, non-FME, questions I think.Let's say if you beat Mark individually, it'll be a great achievement. If you all beat him as a group... then I might as well stop putting you up against Safe staff, because I can't think of anyone else here more experienced (who hasn't already taken the quiz).I was tempted to make the questions super difficult; but in the end I just went with what I was planning anywa

Hello FME'ers,This question-of-the-week comes from GIS/StackExchange; the first one I've taken from there I believe.Question of the WeekThe question was asked by Jochen in Germany, who wanted to know how to carry out an INSERT on selected records only.Q) I have a PostGIS table of, lets say, addresses, for exampleid | adr            | geom----------------------------1  | Rathausplatz 1 | POINT2  | Dorfstraße 2   | POINT3  | Kirchenweg 3   | POINTWith FME I would like to insert features to my adresses table but only features that do not exists (based on non-equality of attribute adr), i.e. for incoming featuresadr            | geom----------------------------Rathausplatz 1 | POINTDorfstraße 2   | POINTSchlossallee 42| POINTElisenstraße 8 | POINTonly Schlossallee 42 and Elisenstraße 8 should be INSERTed, the first two should be rejected.How to achieve this?A) It's sort of an inverse update required here. Instead of updating a record that exists, we're inserting a record that doesn't. Sadl