Question

GDB alias field with shapefile writer

  • 7 June 2019
  • 1 reply
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Badge +6

I have a gdb featurewriter that passes through to a shp featurewriter. For attributes with names at the 10 character limit, the shp writer is using their _alias field to populate instead of the correct one.

Example: ASSETCLASS field is being filled with 'Asset Class', instead of 'Rail'.

Is there a way around this besides adding in and attribute removed for each of the Feature Types?


1 reply

Badge +2

I did a bit of research on this and found out that field aliases can only be saved in the data source when using the Geodatabase format.

Field aliases can be exported/written to another Geodatabase, but not to a Shapefile. Rather, when using Shapefiles, the field alias is saved to the .mxd file (using ArcGIS for example). Unfortunately, this appears to be a limitation of the Shapefile format as it has no way to store the alias in the .dbf file.

More information can be found on the following threads:

Field alias and shapefiles

Understanding Field Properties, aliases, and table display options

Which parameters in FME will enable the display and sorting capability based on the "alias field in a shapefile?

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