Relatively new FME 2018 user and just trying to see if there some improvements to my use of Tester in the workspace. Now, I've been using Tester a lot to do simple things like using it like a WHERE condition, but in 2018 at least it seems to do a naive, feature-by-feature test of the Tester conditions. For example if I use Tester on a 2M feature input with a condition AttributeValue = 'A', then this takes around 2 minutes to complete.
However, I've later discovered FeatureJoiner as a go-to transformer for significantly better performance as this seems to first index the Attribute(s) in question first before testing them, as well as passing out the Unjoined features without any post-processing overhead as essentially "untouched" features.
If I instead use an alternative of Creator(1 feature)->AttributeCreator(Set AttributeValue='A') to make a single Test Feature, and then pass this into the RHS of a FeatureJoiner transformer to test against the 2M feature set on the LHS, then the same filter/test then only takes 11 seconds to complete, because it appears FeatureJoiner first creates an index on the feature set to be tested/joined against vs Tester which doesn't.
So, am I using Tester wrong or applying it in the wrong context? I know it can do a lot of other test types but "=" type queries I would have thought would be its bread-and-butter? Is there any other way to wring out attribute indices in other Transformers like Tester, FeatureMerger etc. that similarly get outperformed by transformers that make use of indices like FeatureJoiner?
