The unique port of the duplicate filter outputs the first feature for any key value. It does not only output unique values in a dataset and can be misleading to newcomers to FME.
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+20- Safer
So we talked about this and see your point. We did look at a variety of other tools (like Excel) and they are also a bit fast and loose with the term "unique". But given what we're really doing, we're thinking:
DuplicateFilter
First
Duplicate
OR
DuplicateFilter
First
Duplicates
might be a clearer way of expressing what is going on. What think ye @egomm @david_r @takashi
+22- Contributor
I believe First is as misleading as Unique (not only the first feature will output here, but all first unique features). I would use the SQL terminology:
DuplicateFilter
Distinct
Duplicate
Hi @daleatsafe, honestly it's hard to suggest a better English word fitting the actual behavior, since my mother tongue is not English. Only a thing I would say is that it would be better to keep consistent with the name of the "Unique" operator used in the AttributeValidator, if you would change the port name.
By the way, I found a serious defect in the DuplicateFilter used in conjunction with Feature Tables, and reported it with C129763 yesterday. I hope it will be resolved with the highest priority within the issues regarding the DuplicateFilter. Thanks in advance.
+44- Influencer
The use of unique in the AttributeValidator is even more misleading in my opinion, although wasn't aware of it before as i fell out with it sometime ago.
If I'm testing for unique values, I'd expect all features where the attribute is not unique to fail, not just the 2nd/3rd duplicate found (although would then make this a blocking transformer). But maybe that's just me. The duplicate filter at least gives the hint that it's about filtering/removing duplicates rather than identifying unique values.
Unhelpfully though, I don't know what a better term is - first distinct?
+20- Safer
First Distinct is very clear. No chance for confusion. A bit verbose but it's not like that's stopped us before... :-)
I like "First distinct", although I didn't really have an issue with "Unique" either, haven't had any feedback from our users indicating it was confusing.
+17- Safer
Updated idea statusGathering Interest→Archived
Idea merged into:All the votes from this idea have been transferred.
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