Hello, FMEers.

Here's the weekly What's Up Wednesday post.

SchemaScanner 2022

This transformer was quietly released as part of 2021.2, but since then it received a lot of updates and looks fantastic for 2022. How do I know? Because it was the subject of our FME 2022 Sneak Peek yesterday.

If you work with dynamic schemas in any way - or even if you don't - I suggest checking out this recording (click the link above). It's very insightful.

I think the key difference to how you might expect it to work is that the schema is stored on a separate feature to the data. You just have to make sure that it arrives at the writer first in order to set the schema for the data that follows. An attribute key joins data to schema allowing multiple schemas for a single writer feature type.

Anyway, to return to a previous sneak peek - the one on encoding and UTF-8 - there is now an excellent article on the changes that were made and how they affect you when upgrading to 2022.

I think that article is well worth a read before upgrading to FME 2022.

The Tester is Dead! Long Live the AttributeManager!

OK, so to be absolutely clear, the Tester is not dead. But it has been dethroned from the top of the FME transformer rankings by the AttributeManager:

These rankings are determined by user feedback. When you turn on the option in FME to provide usage statistics...

...then we receive a list of the transformers you use and can calculate information like the above. What's newsworthy about this is that the Tester has been the number one transformer forever! Literally, since we started our records the Tester has been top of the list.

What does this mean? Well, perhaps the Tester is being replaced in its use by the TestFilter? That means we can perhaps one day merge the two transformers together, as our co-founder Dale suggests.

It could also be that the AttributeManager is being used more in place of individual attribute transformers such as the AttributeCopier. Only time will tell.

More 2022 Updates

I haven't checked for myself, but I hear that SQLite formats will be refreshed in FME 2022. I don't want to go into too much detail, but there is a mix of deprecations, additions, and updates that leave us with two formats: SQLite and SpatiaLite.

The reason I won't go into detail is that there is an article being created by my colleague Liz. So look out for that on the knowledgebase shortly. What I will say is that the two remaining formats are now standardized with all other database formats (and each other) and that Upsert support is included.

Good news also for users of the JPEG reader/writer. FME users on Windows will find a substantial performance increase in 2022. This even includes where JPEG is used as a texture in 3D features.

User News

Here are some general news items about FME users around the world...

• Congratulations to Gavin Jeter in New Zealand for achieving his FME Server certification. Also to our long-time hero Takashi Iijima, whose FME Certified Professional status has been deservedly renewed for another three years.
• Congratulations also to North Ayrshire Council for appearing on the 1Spatial blog. I saw them present this project (streamlining HR operations) at a virtual world tour event last year, and I was very impressed. You can also read about it as a customer story on the Safe website.
• Check out how Bruce Harold creates an FME Custom Format using ArcGIS Data Interoperability tools. I'm a big fan of custom formats and love seeing them get more recognition. The steps to create one in FME itself are pretty much the same as Bruce outlines, except you don't need to add a writer; FME will do that itself when you export as a custom format.
• Safe has been named a Strong Performer in the January 2022 Gartner Peer Insights ‘Voice of the Customer’ for Data Integration Tools report. I list this as "user news" because it really is all down to you! Thank you for being the amazing user community that you are.

Bob the FME Builder

Don't forget that FMEBetaBuilder is an account on Twitter (we like to call it Bob) that automatically posts when new beta builds become available for FME.

Bob's had an up-and-down history since I created him in... wow, 2009! But it looks like he's now part of a stable process and worth following if you like to keep up-to-date with FME updates as they happen.