Shape the future of FME with your ideas
Open ideas have been reviewed by our Product Management and are open for commenting and voting.
Hello,I have noticed that any question with hyperlinks posted on the community goes to the moderators for review now. I think this slows the process of answering questions as the questions are reviewed by moderators in another timezone and would take a day to publish and another day to get answered.My idea would be remove the moderators review.Thanks
A parameter is like an argument that is static. A variable, however, represents a state and can be dynamically created and assigned in a workspace. I wish FME workspace UI exposes variables the same way it exposes parameters or attributes. Converting variables to attributes via VariableRetriever does not help, as attributes are about content while variables are about states and flow control.I am in agreement with @bambography in his or her post. https://knowledge.safe.com/questions/34563/can-global-variables-be-accessed-as-values-in-tran.html
To Clear the entire feature cache a user has to go to the first transformer, right click it and select clear data cache. Or start and stop the translation quickly.I’d like the option to clear the entire cache when I right click anywhere in the canvas and additionally a clear cache button in the toolbar would be nice.This would help speed up the development process and improve user workflow for a feature that already exists but could be improved.
Currently a User Parameter of type Choice can be configured as a drop-down, and the user is permitted to edit the choice, or it can be defined as a list or tree and allow multiple selection. But it cannot be both multi-select and allow choice edit.I would like the ability for the user to add values to the tree view in multi-select mode.
I’m trying to write features to an esri feature service, but getting “fatal errors” from the feature service that is causing the entire FME workspace to fail. I should be allowed to decide what to do if a “fatal error”, much in the same way that I can choose how to handle rejected features (Terminate Translation or Continue Translation).FME should just “fail” that single request and continue writing features out. Examples of where this would be useful:
When using a FME Server App which fails for some reason there is no built in way to return an error message to the user. It is always an unknown problem.It would be great if there was a way to return a few more details to the user. This is particularly important when an invalid dataset is uploaded. Without a workaround there is currently no way to let the user know their data needs to be fixed.
When using the GeometryReplacer sometimes the coordinate system isn’t defined - for example with GeoJSON. It would be nice to have an optional field to define the coordinate system at the same time as replacing it. A geometry replacer followed by CoordianteSytemSetter is fun, just would be neater to have it bundled together
***Note from Migration:*** Original Title was: Add Coordinate System Extracting/Setting functionality to GeometryExtractor/Replacer You can use a pair of the GeometryExtractor and the GeometryReplacer effectively when you perform a geometric operation on the feature but need to restore the original geometry later. And if you perform coordinate system transformation in the operation, you will also have to restore the original coordinate system.In such a case, you can use a pair of the CoordinateSystemExtractor and the CoordinateSystemSetter to restore the coordinate system, but it would be a bit tedious.It would be nice if the GeometryExtractor/Replecer have the same functionality as the CoordinateSystemExtractor/Setter optionally.
Introduce native integrations with enterprise secrets managers:- Direct API integration with the likes of AWS Secrets Manager and Azure Key Vault.- FME Engines dynamically retrieve database passwords, API keys and OAuth tokens at runtime directly from a secure vault, ensuring sensitive credentials are never stored locally or inside workspace files.
I submitted this question 5 yrs ago. Still not a solid solution for this issue. To date i have had to create 3 different systems (matching records) between, autodesk, esri, fme and trimble. And for some unexplained reason fme started obfuscating their naming system when you use CSExtractor to Coordinate System `_UTM83-13_0' parameters: CS_NAME=`_UTM83-13_0' CS_ORIGINAL_NAME=`UTM83-13' But the Idea is. Add a method of smartly matching the trimble projection found in the jxl to the fme espg, or esri or even autodesk projection. Find a way to standardize this. I know if i try to project something to the incorrect project it tells me outside of coordinates. It seems there are many ways to get these matched especially when there is an existing system name.https://docs.safe.com/fme/html/FME-Form-Documentation/FME-ReadersWriters/jobxml/jobxml.htm this indicates that coordinate systems are now supported in jxl. is that the case?
Please improve the FeatureWriter editing experience for large numbers of feature types. Suggested enhancements:Allow input ports / feature types to be sorted alphabetically, for example by right-clicking the FeatureWriter on canvas and choosing Sort. Inside the FeatureWriter dialog, support sorting selected or all feature types, either with a Sort command or beside the move up/down controls. Add bulk-edit behavior inside the FeatureWriter so multiple feature types can be selected and common per-feature-type settings can be applied to all selected items at once, similar to multi-select property editing in IDEs such as Visual Studio.This would make FeatureWriter much easier to manage when working with many feature types, especially dynamic schema-heavy sources. Right now feature types can be manually reordered, but there is no efficient sort or bulk apply workflow. This would streamline “create if needed” tables and changing to operations to UPSERT while setting specific or common update key field; “Match Columns” Also, the bulk change to the table qualifier and other “apply to” like behavior will bring up the parity with the classic Feature Writer workflows.
It would be helpful if FME Server 2017 had an SFTP Watcher. Currently the regular FTP Watcher does not support SFTP. I am aware that the Notification Service supports SFTP subscriptions but currently in 2017.0.1.1 there is no corresponding SFTP publication option.
I've noticed that the Safe Software YouTube channel has recently started publishing more short tips, tricks, and workflow videos, which is great to see. I really appreciate the effort to create more educational content for the FME community.I do have a few suggestions that I think could make these videos even more engaging and effective.1. Audio qualityThe biggest issue, in my opinion, is the sound quality. It often sounds like it was recorded with a fairly basic microphone and includes noticeable background noise. Since audio quality has a huge impact on viewer retention, investing in a better microphone, cleaner recording setup, or basic audio post-processing would make a significant difference.2. Editing and pacingMany videos feel longer than necessary. Tips that could often be explained in 30–60 seconds are sometimes stretched to 3–5 minutes. Today's audiences are used to concise, information-dense content, so tighter editing and faster pacing would likely make the videos more useful and easier to watch.3. Overall production qualityThe videos would also benefit from a more polished production style. A simple screen recording is useful, but adding zoom-ins, highlights, annotations, quick cuts, clearer structure, or occasional graphics would help viewers focus on the key points.If video production is not a primary focus for the internal team, it might be worth collaborating with someone who specializes in educational video production, YouTube content, or short-form technical content. Even a small improvement in production quality could make the videos feel more professional and help present FME in the best possible light.The technical content itself is valuable. I simply think that better audio, tighter editing, faster pacing, and a more polished presentation would help these videos reach a wider audience and make them more enjoyable to watch.Thanks again for creating more content for the FME community. I hope you'll continue publishing more videos.
A function to enable|disable the Startup|Shutdown Python Script at once would be desirable.It is always very expensive if you have to comment out all lines just jor testing
We are interested in the integration of the data format INTREST (=intermodal referencing system for traffic related data). Background is: traffic routing with FME. Thank you in advance
add webservice definitions to FME Flow roles, so we can control who can access them, it seems if you use FME Flow as connection storage for FME Form, connections are controlled by roles, but anyone can see and use any webservice definition. If I am wrong about this, then this idea can be dropped.
In recent security audit, one of the concerns was with the FME Server log-in.As there is no limit on the amount of retries, the login can be brute-forced.Please add a toggle and a parameter for limited login-retries, just like 'Password Policy' in the system configuration.Perhaps also adjust the system-event to only trigger after a set number of attempts, and have the IP-address of the source as one of the keys.Kind regards,Martin
I would like to have the ability to transfer ownership of all items (eg. workspace, automation, app, schedule, connections) to another user in FME Flow.At the moment, we use Azure DevOps agent to publish our content to FME Flow and it has to use the username/password of that account. Our security guys would like to see this more granular (eg. devops account publish the content and then transfer ownership to another account to own the content) to see who/where the interactions occur within the platform. Thanks
To connect to a PostgreSQL database, many tools allow to use a pgpass file (https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/libpq-pgpass.html) or a pg_service file (https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/libpq-pgservice.html).It could be great to use such files in FME with the postgresql reader/writer and the SQL executor.Three options :Use the selected connexion (current behaviour) Use the pgpass file, fme display a form to set infromations on the connexion and use the selected pgpass line corresponding to the data specified in FME (nothing = 1st line, host or host+port or host+port+user or host+port+user+db = 1st corresponding line) to get the required data to connect For pg_service file, fme display a “service name” input and use the configuration specified by the service name.
An option in the BulkAttributeRemover to remove Unexposed attributes only would be useful.Some transformer eg.: JSONFlattener or JSONFragmenter create all new (potentially unknown) attributes, even though usually the exposed ones are used only - which may be excessive. Now the exposed attributes must be (bulk) renamed before bulk removing the unexposed, but prefixed attributes.An alternative way would be adding a “create Exposed attributes only” option in these transformers, so they wouldn’t even create unnecessary attributes..
I’d like to suggest FME exposes the Database Spatial Tolerance in the Feature Information window, alongside the projection, dimension, min/max extents etc.This information is critical when understanding spatial filtering, and can account for features being inside or outside specific areas of interest when using a spatial filter within a Reader/FeatureReader, and gives context to the features being retrieved.In Oracle, this would mean reading the sdo_metadata table in the database, but other database types would require differing tables to be read. It would also be useful for FME to perform a simple calculation using the projection and the tolerance together, and write a warning message in the translation log if the tolerance (on the ground) is of a large distance - especially useful when spatially filtering data.Thanks,
The Readers now give out more warnings than before, it’s becoming an issue for some when monitoring from FME Flow or when someone who isn’t a daily FME user needs to run a workflow.A way to tone down those types of warning would be a great addition, because sometime the warnings are actually meaningfull and we don’t want to have look at all the jobs or remember that X numbers of warning for this specific workspace are meaningless. Two examples are these: Spatial and Non Spatial Reader/Writer got merged together, if you don’t have a spatial component it warns you about it each time, but it’s useless.Oracle Reader: Username and Password in lower case cause a warning that can be interpretted as an error (copied the error from an older post)
In the Autodesk AutoCAD DWG/DXF-writer (and in the other DWG writers too) it would be good if you could choose an attribute for Layer Description, Default Linetype, Default Color and the states: On, Frozen, Hidden, Locked, Plottable. It's not so usable right now when you need to hard code these values which makes all layers look the same.
I’m interested in using FME Flow for Connection Storage in FME Workbench.We have a single FME Flow instance that does not have redundancy. I’m concerned that if Flow is unavailable, that FME Workbench will effectively also be rendered unusable if I use Flow for connection storage, based on what I’ve read in the documentation.Further, FME Form provides me a sort of redundancy at the moment - if Flow is unavailable or if the engines are consumed, I can run my processes locally, as a last resort. In my understanding, moving my connections to Flow would remove this redundancy and leave me more vulnerable to network/infrastructure/system issues.If the above is true, would it be possible to maintain a local cache of connections, similar to the default Personal Database Connection Storage, where it prompts for and perhaps even requires connection and syncing to Flow, but has some sort of fail-back mechanism in the event of failure?I could keep an export of connections locally, or a Shared Database copy, but this will go stale and defeats the purpose of the FME Flow option, I imagine.Thanks for any thoughts or corrections on the above.
As I have many jobs running and a lot doing well, I frequently is called on Failed jobs that are deep in the line and I happen to have a message of the server telling me“Error: The log file for job ID ‘290047’ does not exist”I don’t want to give more space to my logs in general but would appreciate to have the logs of jobs which raised errors (and maybe warnings) longer. FME Flow can destroy logs for OK jobs and keep the error ones longer.
In-depth courses for all FME skill levels.
Explore our extensive collection of how-to guides and tutorials.
Log an issue with us. Our support team is ready to help.
