What's Up Wednesday (14-June-2023): Answering Forum Questions, AI Updates, the LineOnAreaOverlayer, Conditional Parameters, and more FME news.

What's Up Wednesday (14-June-2023): Answering Forum Questions, AI Updates, the LineOnAreaOverlayer, Conditional Parameters, and more FME news.

Hello FME friends,

These are exciting times for us at Safe, and I hope that you're feeling it too.

Part of my excitement is at the thought of renovating the FME Community website, and I have some polls below that I used to try and get your top requirements.

I'm also really happy with the community presentations, that are taking part every week on Thursdays. Last week I presented on conditional parameters, and this week we're getting a presentation on the LineOnAreaOverlayer.

See below for links to those events, and watch out for upcoming presentations on the new Revit writer, the InlineQuerier, and then... who knows?!


Answering Unanswered Questions

Yesterday, Dale and I presented a webinar discussing questions from the FME forums that had yet to receive answers. If you missed it, you can find the details and recording on our website.

We covered questions such as:

  • How to connect multiple feature types to a single transformer in one action.
  • What happened to the aggregate-handling parameter in the GeometryFilter.
  • If we will ever get dynamic choice parameters in FME.
  • How to batch process data with the Clipper.

We also had two polls about the FME Community, and I wanted to share the results with you.

Firstly, what new capabilities would you like to see in the FME Community:

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Secondly, what new Community capabilities would you like to see in FME:

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I discussed the second question with our developers, and it does seem possible that this could happen. I have a vision of being able to ask and answer questions directly from FME, with an alert (or inbox) to inform you when a question has received an answer.

If you have any strong thoughts about either question - or think that I might have missed something useful - then please leave a comment.

But also remember to watch the webinar recording. Let me know if they left my singing in at the end (I don't have the courage to check for myself)!


Technical Blog Posts

In the above polls, the second choice requirement for the FME Community was blog posts. You probably already noticed that the current blog went away with the rebrand. So, what we hope to do is post blog-like articles to the Community website instead.

Displaying a fantastic sense of timing, my colleague Tiana just posted a blog article about the current state of AI capabilities in FME.

There are six different examples of what can be done, right now. My favourite is probably having AI generate a spatial dataset of data.

For example,

All 50 US State names, their 2 letter code, an example zipcode in each, and the capital city.
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You might think that the prompt needs more detail than that - for example, asking for a particular data format - but, no!

That's because this particular example uses the new Generative AI Prompt reader:

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It works with both OpenAI and Azure OpenAI, and you can find it on the FME Hub. It's a great example of the new package tools, consisting of a reader, a Python script, and two web service definitions.

Check out the article for more information and try out some of the examples. It's quite amazing what you can do.


On the subject of AI, here's a short video from Tensing (Silver partner, various locations) about the research they're doing to integrate it with FME and the HTTPCaller.


FME:23 Community Presentations

Our weekly community presentations are ongoing, and this week (Thursday 15th), we have a presentation on the LineOnAreaOverlayer.

That's an existing transformer that got a nice update for 2023. It's not a huge update, but it's one that has been asked for many times. As one of those requests said:

This is something even kindergarten kids can do ("if you cut the pie here, how many pieces do you have?"), but FME can't.

OK, then. Well, FME is still young enough to apply for the Canada Youth Jobs scheme (15-30), but it probably is time we graduated from spatial kindergarten. So this capability is being demonstrated tomorrow, and I encourage you to tune in and ask questions.

Just visit this page on Twitch. No registration is required, although you should totally sign up and click on the Follow button to be alerted when we go live.

Speaking of which, if you want to watch last week's presentation on Conditional Parameters, you can find it here.

I also want to direct your attention to a video I made about updating FME Hub transformers, which fits nicely with Conditional Parameters. It's available on YouTube.

It's a longer video but actually shows updating a Hub transformer for real, including all the unexpected twists that happen with a live demonstration!


The World of FME Events

There are still some FME-related events going on, and others scheduled for the future. Here's a look at two of them.

In London (UK) this week, we had a stop on the 1Spatial tour.

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The above image shows a presentation by Jacobs (an engineering company, I believe) about how they use FME to automate data validation.

1Spatial (Platinum partner, various locations) was in Leeds earlier this week, and the final stop on their tour is in Cardiff, Wales, tomorrow (15th June).

Tensing (Silver, various locations) will also be visiting London on tour, but not until later in the year. It's part of an October tour taking in the British capitals of London, Cardiff, and Edinburgh.

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If you know of any other events - or have photos of the Norkart event last week(?) - then please let me know.


Miscellaneous News

For Italian speakers, a webinar from GeneGIS GI (Silver, Italy) about the latest updates to FME and Safe Software.

Congratulations to Globema (Silver, Poland) on your 25th anniversary.

Red Geographics' (Silver, Netherlands) "Transformer Friday" post is about the WorkspaceRunner.

Here's the latest fireside chat from Abley (Service Partner, New Zealand) all about FME certification.


Sigbj?rn Tillerli Herstad

Data Scientist at NORKART AS

1 年

FME Arena Norway was a great event as always, 9th in a row - looking forward to next year. Kenneth ?yen-Eriksen held a steady hand on the show. Cleaning the closet of old FME-branded swag clearing space for new one. We`ll also wear some of the new swag in Bonn at the FMEUC. Great talks from many clients, those are the best.

Gavin Jeter

Business Solutions Lead

1 年

Thank you for sharing the Abley Fireside, Mark Ireland! Reading your weekly newsletter is always a pleasure. Cheers!

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