FME 2009 User Conference: Transforming the Inconceivable into Reality

After the first full day of Safe Software’s FME 2009 User Conference in Whistler, British Columbia, one characteristic of the show became abundantly clear: attendees here were really happy. Notably happy. Perhaps it was the alpine air of the Whistler/Blackcomb Mountain resort or its magical setting. Or perhaps it was the recurring visions of Safe co-founders Dale Lutz and Don Murray’s opening banter and willingness to have unabashed fun as they highlighted the company’s successes and future strategies for its core spatial data transformation and distribution technology FME. Granted, it was amusing to watch Lutz and Murray tag team like the two old balcony hecklers from the Muppet Show, but could their intelligent playfulness really be the source of all this positive energy?

By Mary Jo Wagner

 “I am not sure why everyone seems so happy,” said Lutz, Safe’s vice president of development, laughing. “But customers do tell us that FME is fun to use and makes the process of experimentation with data and applications enjoyable for them.”
The “fun” factor of FME does seem to play a role, but attendees pointed to other underlying elements.
 “Safe has a great attitude,” remarked Michael Leierer, assistant project manager and technical lead with the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT). “User experience is very important to us technical, software developers and Safe really seems to care about the user experience. They want to make our job easier so we enjoy what we do. So I think the ‘happiness’ that you’re seeing at this conference comes from that.”
Jason Birch, a senior applications analyst with the City of Nanaimo in B.C., explained it this way. “I don’t know if it’s because Safe is really good at what they do or it’s because they really listen to customers. But either way, FME makes users look good.”
 
An Agnostic Approach
Indeed, from June 11-12, more than 140 attendees learned how FME technology has made many users and organizations “look good” since it greatly advanced from its strictly early data-format translation days to become a full-scale spatial ETL tool capable of handling nearly any spatial data conceivable.

“Today’s FME is all about transforming and delivering realities,” said Murray in his welcome speech. “FME is really whatever users want it to be - an aggregator, an integrator, a transformer, a deliverer. We want it to be an agnostic data engine so you can decide what you want it to drive.”
This rather  “Switzerland” approach to spatial data management and distribution - offering a completely neutral data engine and leaving the application driving to the user - resonated with the in-the-trenches users who readily recognize that data interoperability, distribution and managing large volumes of data have still been key struggles for geospatial users to resolve.
“Three years ago we were only using FME for relatively simple CAD translations,” said James Katz, an IT specialist with engineering firm Burns & McDonnell. “Now we are using it to drive real-time project management systems for billion-dollar construction projects. FME is so powerful, it’s hard to keep up with the development possibilities.”

And possibilities were abound at this show, from the small-scale data integration needs of one local authority to the macro-scale challenges of creating mammoth statewide and nationwide spatial data infrastructures (SDIs) to the real-time 3D visualization and information delivery of real-time events.
To be sure, all is still not resolved in the data-sharing business as countless proprietary data silos still dot the planet, greatly limiting the opportunity to transform geospatial information into real business. But this conference was the platform for FME veterans and newcomers alike to showcase how they are smashing through those silos to transform once inconceivable initiatives into realities that respond to the pull of increasing requests for on-demand data as well as the push of their own visions for better spatial data integration and services - regardless of scale.
 

Fee on FME
GIS blogger James Fee, a and former consultant with RSP Architects and now a “cloud-computing evangelist” with WeoGeo, focused heavily on data sharing and usability issues in his keynote address "Removing the Barriers to Data Sharing" on the first morning of the show. He took us down memory lane from our rudimentary data-sharing methods - remember needing 24 floppy disks to upload one large dataset - to electronic data sharing of the Web, FTP and finally to macro geoportals such as data.gov, and highlighted how each has not quite met users’ customized needs. Most portals, he said, still lack three important elements: open source data (though that definition is subjective), caching and “findability” - the ease in which a non-geospatial user can find specific datasets. 

Fee proposed his own recipe for what a portal should look like. In addition to offering open data, caching and a good geo-enabled search engine, today’s geoportal should have “Google-fast” performance, enable users to perform customized data requests (which requires spatial ETL), offer flexible pay-as-you-use pricing and be IT friendly.

An example of such a comprehensive portal, said Fee, is the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center (www.gnocdc.org/) which was built on Linux, Django and Google Maps and uses cloud computing powered by WeoGeo, Amazon Web Services and Safe Software to allow users to search geodata, request customized datasets, purchase and then download their order. In addition, the Center can track data requests and deliveries through cloud-based Salesforce.com, providing possible business opportunities for other non-and for-profits connected to the site.
 Fee noted that FME is a critical component of the portal because it really serves the individual and completes the needed geoportal e-delivery chain.
 “Findability, usability and customization are so important to a portal’s offering because users’ data needs are as individual as the users themselves,” he said. “FME helps us fine tune what we want to achieve and allows us to give the clients what they want, regardless of data type, format or coordinate system.”
 

A Transforming Force 
 Lutz and Murray illustrated Fee’s point in their own keynote address on the second day, when, in their usual mix of serious technical knowledge and lighthearted fun, they highlighted the advancements in FME 2009 as well as what users can expect with FME 2010 scheduled for release early next year (Murray offered customized FME diapers to the crowd in case the excitement of the new features was just too great. He also promised to wear one if his demos didn’t work.) 

Though Safe has made great strides in responding to data interoperability needs, Murray noted that FME 2009 has really been the transforming force for customers as well as for Safe itself. For FME has not only been a pioneer in supporting 3D interoperability, and a core enabler for online spatial data distribution and large-scale SDIs, it has helped Safe transform its reputation as the “data format” company. Instead, said Murray, Safe is now known as a comprehensive, end-to-end solutions company, based largely on FME’s own transformation into a data-management powerhouse. The company is stretching FME to provide more data support - it presently supports more than 225 formats - more transformers, more platforms and more user friendly tools. In addition, it is making a strong strategic push to penetrate new markets by leveraging its FME Server on-the-fly transformation and distribution capabilities, as well as expanding its operating system support, improving 3D data viewing and manipulation and bettering raster data management. 
 Notable improvements in the 2010 release are increased performance speed ranging from 5 to 20 percent; specific-text searches in Workbench; better 2D and 3D rendering with textures; more data support including Sketchup, Civil 3D and BAG; a move from 32-bit to 64-bit platforms; improved security; seamless data distribution of any geo-type; new transformers such as one that writes a message to Twitter; and support for real-time streaming applications.

Murray then demonstrated some of this new functionality. Aggregating elevation data, basic footprints and photos of building faces he created a 3D texture-rich model of an urban cluster. Using FME Server, that model could then  be used for on-the-fly visualizations. The same concept was applied to render a 3D view of the Eiffel Tower. Both transformations provoked audible “ooo’s” from the audience.
FME Server also powered a demonstration to show the tool’s real-time aggregating, transforming and Web-mapping capabilities. Based on a pre-defined perimeter and select individuals’ GPS tracking devices, FME received location data from the devices and automatically sent alerts via Twitter as the “monitored” individuals crossed into the boundary, prompting random cell phones to ring as the individuals’ data points moved around the map. Though fun in nature, it illustrated the viability of driving more serious applications such as tracking missing children or monitoring the real-time movements of courier fleets. 

FME Fun
The demos were indeed clever and mirrored some of the most significant interest among users at the show - the rooms of those presenters showcasing 3D and streaming applications were packed.
 Of the 28 technical presentations offered, one of the most popular  sessions was given by Brendan Cunningham, a GIS project leader with Kilkenny County Council  (KCC) in Ireland. Cunningham revealed how KCC uses FME to drive an online system (http://reports.kilkennycoco.ie) that automatically notifies registered residents via email or cell phone of local service disruptions such as water outages or road closures based on the citizen’s location. Along with the SMS alert, registrants receive an email with full details of the service disruption. Operational since November 2008, it’s the first electronic notification service of its kind in the country and has attracted a lot of interest from neighboring regions.
Cunningham said the KCC notification service eliminates the need to rely on radio and newspaper announcements, and with the scalability and flexibility of FME, the service could be replicated for other purposes such as early-warning systems for natural disasters or real-time alerts of kidnappings.

Equally impressive is the FME and Google Earth-based systems produced by a three-person development team at Burns & McDonnell. In one session Wes Hardin, project manager, and Katz presented their FME-powered Google Earth dashboard tool that streams together project management data, design files and GIS software for a real-world project view in real time. Using live data from a project in Connecticut they zoomed into one segment of the construction site to show a detailed 3D view of any point, complete with attribute information relative to a pole, underground vault, community relations’ issue or real estate negotiation. They even took the dashboard concept one step further by developing an “issue meter dial”, similar to the gas gauge on a car, this color-coded meter popped up as they moved around the 3D view and the dial moved according to the number of issues that had been logged for a particular parcel or pole. Of particular note for Katz was how quickly FME is able to manage substantial volumes of data.

“We are serving up about one terabyte of information and people are able to access it out in the field with a laptop,” he said. “That’s amazing.”
 The same company also developed an FME-based animation application for South Florida Water Management District to visualize rainfall data in real-time. Demonstrated by Ryan Boyce, IM specialist, and Hardin, they aptly illustrated how FME’s flexibility enabled them to integrate tabular text data, GIS data layers and radar satellite imagery to animate rainfall events in real-time increments from 15 minutes to 24 hours across a 16-county region. The animations involved developing methods to continually check for new data, validate the data, schedule animations by priority and process up to 30 frames of animation each with more than 30,000 features for real-time viewing in Google Earth.

“I don’t think there is any other tool that can process this much data into a KML format that quickly,” said Boyce.
 Managing and transforming large volumes of data did indeed seem to be a recurring theme throughout many presentations.
 WSDOT’s Leierer showed how they’re using FME in combination with other tools to power the creation of a statewide multi-modal transportation dataset. Focusing initially on the road networks, FME is transforming disparate data including roads centerline data with addresses and route milepost linear referencing systems into a centralized ArcSDE database to create a seamless, consistent dataset for users to access via an Intranet portal. To date they have integrated road data from eight counties and plan to have 16 completed by spring of 2010. The overall objective, however, is to have a centralized database offering seamless coverage of rail, ports and airports for the entire state. It’s an impressive initiative that will provide substantial benefits to business and government, particularly first responders. Leierer noted that FME has been a critical success factor in their effort to date.
“We are integrating massive amounts of data in their original form,” said Leierer. “It would be very difficult to do without a spatial ETL tool like FME, which doesn’t care what data format you use.”

Integrating massive amounts of data was also the focal point of a demonstration by con terra to show how SDIs are becoming a reality across Europe with the help of FME. Mark Doring illustrated how both FME Desktop and FME Server can be used to transform existing data into an SDI’s specified model and enable users to develop revenue-generating services. 
 FME as a data validator and aggregator was demonstrated by Clayton Wise, senior programmer analyst of Virginia’s Hampton Roads Sanitation District, which is using the tool to upload and validate diverse data inputs from 14 separate models into one homogenous regional hydraulic wastewater model. The same loading and validating functionality is being used by NOAA to create a single data warehouse for a new Web-based bathymetry system.
Much interest was also sparked by a number of sessions showing FME’s prowess in supporting 3D applications particularly for the BIM market. Christian Dahmen of con terra visualized how FME users can generate, validate and prepare data from disparate sources to build CityGML models. And Ulf Månsson, a project manager with SWECO, showed how they used FME to transform text-based laser scan data into a Digital Terrain Model for climate change analysis in Kavlinge, Sweden.
 By the end of the conference, one message became clear: FME has transformed itself far beyond its previous form to give life to a number of initiatives otherwise left on paper. It has also clearly left the development door wide open to users’ imaginations. Perhaps that’s what makes it so fun to be an FME user - and happy.

Safe in numbers:

- In business since 1993
- 95 employees
- 113 resellers in 47 countries
- 7500 users in 116 countries
- FME 2009 contains more than 430 user-requested features

Internet: www.safe.com