Don’t forget, those who are planning to attend the FME Worldwide User Conference in March need to get their registration by January 24th. Alas I’m not going (believe me not by choice), but looking at the Agenda and Breakout sessions it will be quite the learning experience for any who go.
Jason Birch’s favorite transformer post on the FME user group sums up perfectly how powerful and helpful FME is to so many people. FME is flying under the radar for most folks I talk to and it shouldn’t be. It is such a critical piece of any geospatial work flow that ignoring FME (OK, to be fair ignoring Spatial ETL) puts you at great risk for future employment. I see myself using FME as my primary method of getting spatial data into SQL Server 2008 Katmai going forward.
Damn I wish I was going, now I’m all depressed….
26 responses so far ↓
1
Cam W.
// Jan 23, 2008 at 9:50 pm
James I couldn’t agree with you more. FME is a great tool that I find myself using more and more often.
2
mfusr
// Jan 24, 2008 at 8:36 am
James,
you already have a copy of Manifold. Why don’t you just use that to import data into Katmai?
3
James Fee
// Jan 24, 2008 at 8:47 am
There are other ways to get data into Katmai, but FME brings much to the table as far as their transformers. Plus the future isn’t ArcMap/Manifold/Intergraph. Those are just middle men that muck up workflows. FME is liberating.
4
Danny J
// Jan 24, 2008 at 8:59 am
Interesting James. I’ve heard much about FME and I’ve seen Safe at the ESRI UC. Much like web services, this is another thing I probably need to start learning about.
Thanks for the pointers, they are what make your blog so important.
5
Chris C.
// Jan 24, 2008 at 9:11 am
‘Plus the future isn’t ArcMap/Manifold/Intergraph.’
James you really do want to be free from ESRI…
6
Bill
// Jan 24, 2008 at 9:17 am
I have been working with FME lately and am impressed so far. I agree with your comments about the importance of spatial ETL. ETL has been a crucial piece of data management workflows for databases for a long time. FME and OGR and others demostrate that spatial ETL can and should be an automated part of your workflow that doesn’t require “human-in-the-loop” use of desktop applications.
7
Gretch
// Jan 24, 2008 at 9:22 am
How much does FME cost? I don’t see prices on their page.
8
David Davis
// Jan 24, 2008 at 9:26 am
Interesting James. I had always thought of FME as a conversion tool I see that it is so much more. So if I understand this, you can do what we in the ESRI world call “Geoprocessing” with FME using those transformers.
I can see how powerful this is. Thanks for some good reading today.
9
James Fee
// Jan 24, 2008 at 9:38 am
@Chris C: It isn’t that simple. There are real great reasons to use ArcGIS Desktop (or Manifold) in your work. FME can streamline the workflows in my daily work. Plus it allows me to visualize the data in much the same way the model builder does.
10
Chris C.
// Jan 24, 2008 at 9:46 am
@James: Just a wee joke - you’re right of course whatever you think is the best tool for the job and it’s within your budget.
11
Lefty
// Jan 24, 2008 at 10:06 am
Great post on FME James. I use Data Interop Extension (which I realize isn’t full FME) with great success.
Just to point out something glaring here. I used to consider AllPointsBlog as a source to the direction of GIS, but no longer. Its you. Take for example today. You’ve got a great post about Spatial ETL and they’ve got one about mittens.
WTF do any of us care about mittens for?
12
Chris C.
// Jan 24, 2008 at 10:18 am
Is trying to find out the cost of FME a bit like when you go into a swanky jewellery store that doesn’t display prices - if you need to ask don’t bother?
Not a sniff of a price on the interwebs.
13
FMEuser
// Jan 24, 2008 at 10:28 am
Why is it so hard to email sales@safe.com? I could quote our government price but I’m sure it isn’t applicable for most people here.
14
Geovizer
// Jan 24, 2008 at 10:51 am
@FMEuser: For me, I don’t want to email marketing to ask the price of something. This ensures a stream of spam…. it would be friendlier to put a price list on their web site.
15
FMEuser
// Jan 24, 2008 at 10:57 am
I order software for our small city and I rarely get pricing over the internet. From Microsoft, Oracle, Adobe, Autodesk; they all require some sort of email/phone call.
I suppose I could see them putting the price of FME Stand Alone up there for reference. It isn’t as expensive as you might think. We’ve used it with great success in connecting datasets and performing analysis on them. We do have 2 licenses of Manifold.net so it isn’t like I can’t appreciate where you are coming from.
FME works very nicely with Manifold to be honest. Anyone who uses FME can attest to how it frees you up to focus on your results.
Shame you can’t be at the conference James. I’ll email you a little bit to tell you what we are doing. You might be interested.
16
James Fee
// Jan 24, 2008 at 10:59 am
Look forward to it FMEuser. Email is on the right top.
17
mark2atsafe
// Jan 24, 2008 at 12:17 pm
Thanks for the excellent comments everyone.
I just wanted to respond to the comments on pricing for FME. I have a quote (I think from our president Don Murray) which sums it up for us…
“Customers often focus on the lowest price - rather than the project requirements! We’d sooner help a customer to get the correct software - which is often the low-cost option anyway - than have them feel bad about something that doesn’t do what they need”
The other reasons we don’t display prices on the web site are that the price can vary with the type of license (fixed/floating) the number of licenses, the levels of licensing, the billing currency etc, plus we have a global network of resellers, and price can vary with local conditions.
I hope this helps to explain. You should be able to get a quote simply by emailing sales@safe.com or call on 1-604-501-9985 x287 (our sales team loves to talk to people!) and if you ever feel that an email we send you is spam then let us know because the last thing we want is to annoy potential customers!
See you all at the conference(?)
18
Erin
// Jan 24, 2008 at 1:47 pm
Well put Mark. I think most of those who complain about the lack of pricing on the web aren’t really in a position to buy software anyway.
Kudos for the topic James. We’ve actually been looking at adding FME to our exisitng DataInterop license.
19
abridge
// Jan 24, 2008 at 6:30 pm
I just got a quote for a non-profit license for some image analysis software: 14,000 US! No pricing on their website certainly meant something. We were guessing 3-5K. ouch.
20
cram
// Jan 24, 2008 at 11:59 pm
@Erin: That’s nonsense. If the price of the FME suite is, say, $100 or less, I certainly am “in a position” to purchase it, since I am very much interested in what it is doing. If the price is $2,000 or more (and it looks like it is indeed that high), I am “not in a position” to do this.
The point is, you *can’t* normally say whether or not you are “in a position” to purchase software without knowing the price.
21
Office with a view
// Jan 25, 2008 at 9:50 am
We have been FME users for nearly 10 years now. I consider it to be our most important (and cost-effective) piece of spatial software. We’re not an ESRI shop but with FME we can take all comers (ESRI, Oracle, ACAD, MicroStation, Intergraph, MapInfo, VE, GE, GeoRSS, etc.).
One of the biggest advances to FME was the addition of the Workbench. Translations and work flows are now visual with drag-and-drop features. There are even Python extensions for additional processing that can’t be done with FME transformers.
Sometimes we’ll get a few snooty ESRI types that boastfully mention that their data is only in a geodatabase, SDE, BinGrid, blah, blah–thinking that there’s no way for us to view or edit their data. Safe and FME have made ‘GIS’ more about the data itself, not the GIS software.
22
JCoats
// Jan 25, 2008 at 2:03 pm
Been in training, so I’m late to this thread, but I have to say that FME is much more than format conversion…
One button scripts, data QA/QC, locating bad spatial data, corrupted file recovery, automated reformatting of data from the “glass house”, data standardization, workflow automation, and yes, conversation of extremely crappy CAD data to something usable in GIS… any GIS! Yep, our copy was about $3K, worth every penny, and finding more uses every day — JC
23
Jeff
// Jan 27, 2008 at 6:21 am
James,
I have been reading your blog for several years now and I guess this is the first time I discover that you are not only an ArcGIS blogger, but also an FME Fan, which makes me quite happy. I use FME every day in addition to ArcGIS and it is certainly the most powerful tool out there to manipulate data coming from different vendors and streamline it into your production environment or the other way round.
It’s all about the data and the price is really not an issue. A standalone FME Pro licence is in the same price range than ArcView, but it has much more “geoprocessing” possibilities than ArcView has.
If your business is about treating data, and not making maps, FME is much more useful than ArcView (or Manifold or whatsoever).
After the treatment in FME, you can use the mapping software you want to make your beautiful looking map.
That’s the power of being able to write > 200 formats out of FME, vector and raster, combine the two, send them as KML network links into GE or import them into your SDE, SQL Server, MySQL, PostGIS, Oracle Spatial and so much more …
There is certainly no other tool on the market giving you the same flexibility to manipulate data in a graphical drag and drop editing environment than FME Workbench.
For those who don’t know FME, try out the 15-days-eval licence available on http://www.safe.com. It could change your life!
I’ll be at the FME User conf and try to keep you updated in some ways.
It’s a shame you will not be there, James.
Would have been fun …
24
James Fee
// Jan 27, 2008 at 11:14 am
Thanks Jeff. I plan to do show some “Geoprocessing” in FME and ArcGIS side by side so folks can see the power of FME.
25
Jeff
// Jan 27, 2008 at 1:52 pm
I’ve been thinking about doing the same in a blog of my own, but I have not had the time yet to begin that blog.
Perhaps I will do that soon.
26
FYI
// Jan 28, 2008 at 1:44 pm
Good thread.
It seems appropriate to mention that CamptoCamp has released their Version 1.1 of the Spatial Data Integrator, which is of course based on Talend Open Studio 2.2.4.
Granted its not quite as mature as FME but its considerably cheaper (*FREE*) and all of the other perks of FOSS.
Good timing as usual!!
Leave a Comment