Shape the future of FME with your ideas
Open ideas have been reviewed by our Product Management and are open for commenting and voting.
Sometimes when dealing with large sets of Columns in the Visual Prview, it would be very useful to keep the Columns... filter choice persistent.So that if I select a different transformer and come back again , I dont have to go and re-filter the column list every time. It remembers the filter I had set and only shows me the columns im interested in at this point.
As per another question, raised by another user, regarding the use of CUDA and GPU support in FME, I would also like to raise this as an idea for future FME releases.My team and I routinely work with large (terabyte) sized images and we would greatly benefit from having GPU processing to improve the performance of our workbenches, particularly in the output stage.Can you please add GPU support (particularly for raster reader, transformers and writers) to your development plans?ThanksBrad
Slideshow allows to automatically step through selected features. As of now it will only display the current feature. This is quite useful for presentation.What I am looking for is a way to let slideshow run and keep features which were displayed already. Kind of an “Add On” or “Collective” mode. It would start with 1 feature, add the second, add third … an in the end all features would be displayed.
Hi,I’m currently in the process of upgrading some older workspaces to work in FME Form/Flow 2024.X.I really like the functionality that allows us to now upgrade all transformers at once. I do however get quite annoyed by the following popup: Would it be a possible to add an option here that says:“don’t ask again for this session/workspace”.I made a backup of my workspace before starting the upgrade of all my transforms and just want to go through this and check the end result. It feels like quite a waste of time to go through this menu for every transformer type.I do think it should come up again when i start with the next workspace, hence the “for this session/workspace” part.Edit: The same goes for the menu afterwards that askes if you want to export a report.Kind regards,Jurgen
Original post can be found here:FME Workspace APP - Markdown URL / Link using Target Blank | CommunityI’d like to implement the following:I’d like to implement target=”blank”.[link](url){:target="_blank"} (Kramdown)Or<a href="My URL" target="_blank">Opens in new tab</a>
This doesn’t currently seem possible so thought I would raise it as an idea to see if it is able to be implemented.In a nutshell, it is requesting a way to capture the same output you see in the “Messages” tab of SQL Server Management Studio, when firing off a SQL Stored Procedure using the SQLExecutor function in FME.Using an example to help explain this:There is a SQL stored procedure which, when run in SQL Server Management Studio, outputs a lot of PRINT statements to the “Messages” tab (highlighted below), which are really useful for troubleshooting the procedure if there are any issues encountered when running. And also useful for seeing exactly what has run. When this stored procedure is run using SQLExecutor in FME, although I have logging (including at debug level) in FME, it doesn’t capture these PRINT outputs, or any of the SQL queries that run for that matter. An example of the output I am referring to is below (from SQL Server Management Studio).It would be really useful to capture this information in a log file/transaction log, so there can be a check each morning to see if any errors have occurred in the SQL stored procedure that has run overnight. In some cases where the workspace completes successfully, but the SQL stored procedure does not, the log would show as completing successfuly but there wouldn’t be any indication in the FME log that there was an issue with the SQL stored procedure, i.e., it seems that everything has completed successfully when it actually hasn’t.The ability to capture this output from SQL Server would be very useful.
It would be nice to have the ability to import/export user parameters (public and private) in FME desktop via some sort of configuration file.
It would be very useful to have repositories to manage automations, in the same way as workspaces. While tags are useful, the aren’t as easy to manage as repositories, especially once you have many automations.
Hi there,The known issues pages (e.g. https://support.safe.com/hc/en-us/articles/25407724250509-Known-Issues-in-FME-2024-x) only list new issues that are discovered in that version. Old issues from previous versions that are unresolved are hidden away in previous version pages. These pages should be cumulative, with the latest page listing all unresolved issues from previous versions as well as new ones. This would be much easier for users to locate all current issues.Thanks,Marc
Good afternoon. I am in need of a transformer that can promote a certain row to create attributes Dynamically. It would be like a power query promote first row to header.I am reading a text file but text_line_data is coming in as the attribute instead of the data from the first row. This could be useful when reading csv files and specifying a particular row that has the attribute names.
Reading a feature service can take a while, but getting the data state is valuable if you’re doing change detection or a bulk copy. The ArcGISOnlineConnector does not support download of a feature service item. This idea is for a transformer that uses the asynchronous export capability of hosted feature layers to deliver a download, such as file geodatabase, for downstream processing. For example: https://community.esri.com/t5/arcgis-data-interoperability-blog/etl-pattern-avoid-serializing-bulk-i-o/ba-p/1542004
Felt maps (felt.com) is a new mapping platform. I’ve started using it and would like to see FME integrate readers, writers and transformers into FME Form to more easily work with Felt maps, loading data, refreshing data, etc. Felt have a REST API: Quickstart | Developer Docs (felt.com)
User Story:As an FME user working with multiple databases on the same SQL Server instance, I want to be able to create a "SQL Server Instance Connection" in FME Options, similar to how I connect in SSMS. This would allow me to:Connect to the SQL Server instance without initially specifying a database. Dynamically switch between databases within my workspace using a transformer or parameter. Execute SQL statements against different databases without needing separate connections for each database.This would greatly simplify my workflows, reduce connection management overhead, and provide more flexibility when working with multiple databases in FME. Example Scenario:I have a workspace that processes data from three different databases on the same SQL Server instance. Currently, I need to create three separate database connections in FME. With an "FME server connection," I could:Join between tables from different databases in the same queryThis enhancement would make FME even more powerful and user-friendly for those who work with multiple databases on the same SQL Server instance. And the performance would take a leap.Yes sure you have a better overview of debugging etc to force the records in the flow. But if performance is important then I believe this could be good
Create the ability to do in-place upgrades for FME Form (Desktop). This would save considerable time and effort for our users and support teams. At least the ability to apply patch releases without a complete new installation would be very helpful. Currently, upgrades take a huge amount of time to install, configure, test, migrate, and deploy for existing installations. We have well over 100 desktops with this software, and thousands of workbenches. If this capability existed, it would make upgrades smoother and easier for us, saving many hours and helping regular patches and upgrades happen more often. This would be especially helpful when new patches are needed for things like security fixes or changes to third party APIs.
Idea is to add new InlineQuerier Parameter “Use In-Memory DB” Previously established that InlineQuerier essentially creates a temporary, on-disk SQLite database file, writes input features into it, performs the queries and deletes the SQLite file afterwards.The current FME approach has a number of drawbacks however including:Overhead to write the input feature tables to disk Query performance throttled by disk I/O Can consume a not in-significant amount of disk space for the temporary queryHaving tested these back-to-back in Python environments (when I was scripting in Python before discovering FME 😉 ) there is often a very large performance difference for large datasets between on-disk and in-memory databases.Programmatically, I suspect this is likely a fairly easy enhancement, because this would utilise exactly the same API sqlite3_open() command that creates+opens the SQLite database as InlineQuerier would use now.Instead of the current InlineQuerier SQLite API call that I suspect looks like thissqlite3_open(FME_Temporary_SQLite_file_name, ...)...the suggested optional parameter above for in-memory DB would simply change the InlineQuerier API call to thissqlite3_open(":memory:", ...)Also running out of memory is not usually an issue as the standard PRAGMA settings will cache to disk any of the in-memory DB where necessary to to keep within RAM limits.
Suggest new InlineQuerier Parameter “Use Spatialite Extension?”No secret that I have been a SQLite/Spatialite fan, albeit very much from my SQL background 😉Still today though, there are certain operations that these SQL approaches are simpler and faster than FME Transformers. What has been missing though is the huge library of Spatial SQL functions that could be utilised by InlineQuerier, if it had a Parameter to load the Spatialite extension. This would significantly increase the workspace flexibility in being able to mix FME Transformers with in-workspace Spatial SQL parsing.Essentially this would provide FME with a ready-made spatial SQL black box with 100s of spatial functions to support its existing Transformers.https://www.gaia-gis.it/gaia-sins/spatialite-sql-5.1.0.htmlI believe that it is likely all the Parameter setting would need to toggle is an initial DB SELECT statement to be run immediately after DB open:SELECT load_extension('mod_spatialite'); or SELECT load_extension('libspatialite');https://www.gaia-gis.it/fossil/libspatialite/wiki?name=mod_spatialite...and ensure that mod_spatialite or libspatialite was resolvable to the Spatialite DLLs that are embedded inside FME already due to its Read/Write support for Spatialite (although updating them to the latest would be nice as well! Alessandro: Spatialite author has spent a lot of time creating new SQL functions for Eg. Network tracing, Topology etc. not yet available to FME because of outdated DLLs)
Hey!I’m faced with the challenge of deploying FME Remote Engine Services in a hybride cloud scenario. In this scenario, Windows/Linux VMs are not an option and I came up with the idea of packaging RES in a Ubuntu-based Docker Image for a containerized deployment. (Question: FME Remote Engine Services - How to build Docker Image and Container? | SafeSoftware Community)My approach was to use silent install with a cfg-file like officially supported for FME Flow installation on a Ubuntu base image. However, I’m adapting it for the Remote Engine Services, which are shipped as a *.run file. This works, however, there is no official support for Remote Engine Services as Docker or Kubernetes deployment and as a workaround I had to build my custom Docker image.It seems like a low hangig fruit to provide official support for Docker and Kubernetes not only for FME Flow but also FME Remote Engine Services. Looking at (hybride) cloud deployments getting more important, I think having Remote Engine Services officially available for Kubernetes/Docker would help a lot of uses cases which aim to bring FME computing closer to cloud data and applications...
The Portal URL value in the connection parameters of the Esri ArcGIS Portal Feature Service Reader does not support user parameters, it would be very helpful if this could be added.
Can the next version of FME please support the latest release of DuckDB - We released DuckDB v1.1.0. This now supports spatial support for geoparquet natively. Thanks
Currently it is not supported. However, I do think it would be a nice (non-scripting) alternative for existing methods like the ones that are described in this post: https://knowledge.safe.com/questions/2948/file-copy-delete.html
I’ve been using the CESIUM 3D Tiles transformer, and my experience has been somewhat tricky because of (I hope) the version that FME writes (1.0). I wonder if future versions of FME will support the 1.1 version to help resolve some issues I’ve encountered, such as the structure of the .json output or to be able to select the type of geometry compression, like Draco, Meshopt, or Quantization.
**UPDATE** - This looks to be a duplicate idea of: https://community.safe.com/ideas/featurewriter%2Doption%2Dto%2Dwrite%2Dto%2Dtemporary%2Dfile%2Dwithout%2Dgiving%2Dan%2Dexplicit%2Dpath%2D32725The use of temp files in FME is not uncommon and the process for creating temp files right now in the middle of a workflow seems more complicated than it needs to be. The current workflow requires a user to put down a TempPathNameCreator and each feature which goes through this will create a new pathname, this is rarely desired. You need to use a FeatureMerger or something similar to get the correct path onto all of the feature which over complicates the process. Better would be an option to either put the same path on each feature, or add a GroupBy. Even better still would be an option directly in the FeatureWriter/HTTPCaller to just output to a temp location and doing away with need for the transformer in many workflows.An additional benefit of changing the way this works would also be in debugging. At present if you want to inspect the temp file in a workflow you either need to modify/disable parts of the workflow and/or change the path in the FeautreWriter/HTTPCaller. Furthermore, the TempPathnameCreator can also be a problem when working with partial runs, indeed, this probably won’t go away with adding the option to the FeatureWriter/HTTPCaller, however, it’s another issue which complicates the process.
When sending a URL to a "Run workspace" or "Gallery app" or "Workspace app" to a large amount of users they often dont know their username. It would be convenient to add a custom message to this dialogue. Similar to what is below, so you dont get the e-mail from all the users - what is my username?
An all in one server upgrade that backs up notifications, workbenches stops the service and then installs the latest server all in one go. At present having to take a server off line for a period of time (especially a live server) is a little nerve racking for a company important server. I take full server images to enable roll backs in case something goes a miss. But an easier upgrade path built into server would be amazing.
Easy way to calculate statistics of rasters within polygon area's. Basic stats like min, mean and average of pixel values.
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