Hi FME'ers,
After a couple of weeks' absence, it's time for What's Up Wednesday. As you can imagine, I have a LOT of content to share this week! Sometimes it's too big to post to an FME forum, so find WUW on LinkedIn to get the full content.
FME Hub Updates
It's the start of a new month, which means the Hub now has a list of items added during May 2022. This list includes the Unfolded format reader and writer, for which you'll need FME 2022.
I've got two new transformers there: a GeographicCenterOfGravityAccumulator, which I created for use in an upcoming webinar, and a SoundexCalculator, because I found the Soundex function in the InlineQuerier doesn't work (oops).
There are other great transformers and tools to check out, but I really wanted to give a mention to Bruce Harold of Esri, who "decided to cut out the middle man" and add some interesting ArcGIS-related transformers to the Hub; like the EsriSimpleModalTripRouter.
This transformer takes a list of start/end addresses:
...geocodes them, and creates a simple route between them. It makes use of ArcGIS Online web services, so will use up some of your credits, but it's a great way to integrate ArcGIS with FME. It also uses real-time traffic conditions, which is something the ShortestPathFinder can't do.
FME Business Professional Certification
My colleagues Sam and Ryan have been working on a new FME certification and - although I haven't seen an official announcement about this - I'm seeing users post online about it.
This certification is to show competence in the business aspects of FME, for example, licensing, sales, and support. I believe it's only available to FME partners because ordinary users wouldn't need to have these skills.
So congratulations to the people I've seen achieve this so far, including Jelle de Zwaef at Nordend, Jean-Luc Miserez at Inser, Kenneth Øyen-Eriksen at Norkart, and SRG at Pixel, who becomes one of the few persons with 4 FME certifications!
If you're an FME partner, see the Safe Software website for details on how to apply. Alternatively, if you're looking to find an FME partner, then check out the updated search page which is now looking very slick!
Community Webinar and FME Scavenger Hunt
Next week we've a webinar scheduled specifically for members of the FME Community. There will be a number of games - like last time - but we've made them using FME in ways that we think you'll find useful.
For example, we're going to use FME and ArcGIS Online to create a crowdsourced map. We're also going to use FME Server apps to create and play our own City-Guesser game:
So there are definitely practical demos and games that you can learn from. We'll also be attempting "Random Acts of Transformation" where Dale and I pick a transformer at random and then try to demo it. I hope we don't get XML again!
But what I really wanted to announce was...
As part of what I'm calling the Summer of FME Fun, we're hosting a huge FME scavenger hunt.
You can find the full details on this page of the Community but, in brief, it's a fun FME-related event that will take place over the summer (allowing you to participate whenever you like). We're using the GooseChase app which you can download now to prepare yourself to play.
There are about 100 different tasks and puzzles that we'll make available over the next few months. Luckily you don't have to do all of them by yourself because players will be in teams.
There are 10 open teams that anyone can join, so you don't have to search for teammates. But there are also 10 private teams that I have reserved for groups. If you can form a group of 5 or more players - maybe work colleagues or local FME users - then let me know and I will make one of the private teams available to you.
User and Partner Creations
From our users, I see that Abley in New Zealand has a new video in their Fireside Chat series. This one is all about FME and HTML. I haven't watched it yet, but I will because creating and consuming HTML is one of my favourite things to do with FME!
Many of the HTML-generating workspaces I produce end up as FME apps, so it's appropriate that in Europe, Bengt at con terra has created an FME zum Kaffee video all about FME Server apps.
If raster is your favourite area, then check out this blog post by Humbert Fiorino. It's all about generating proximity rasters in FME:
As Humbert explains, this functionality isn't natively available inside FME, so instead, he chooses to integrate FME with GDAL using Python scripts. This is a great demonstration and explanation and very worthwhile reading if you are at all interested in raster or Python in FME.