We are pleased to announce that the FME 2004 will be officially released and will start shipping today Thursday December 4, 2003. If you're an AMC holder, we invite you to upgrade to this new release by downloading it from our Download Center. You will receive the latest version on CD in approximately 3-4 weeks.

“ We are very excited by the capabilities of FME 2004. This release is the culmination of several years of work, both in terms of the Workbench user interface and the underlying processing that it allows users to exploit. The new customized formats combined with any FME Objects application, including the Application Extenders, bring the complete transformation power of FME directly into a wide variety of users and scenarios, and will result in many streamlined workflows.”

Product Release highlights:

• FME Customized Format/Customized Datasource: Workbench users can now package one or more input formats and transformers, and then save this workflow as a brand-new, full-fledged input “format”.
• 5 new formats including: AutoCAD 2004 reading, Microstation V8 writing, and IBM DB2 Spatial.
• 16 new transformers, including: Tiler, SpatialFilter, attribute formatters, and list formatters.
• Enhancements to the user interface, focusing on Workbench.

You can read the FME 2004 press release here.

For a complete list of what’s cool about FME 2004, visit www.safe.com/2004 or watch a release movie that outlines the latest and greatest enhancements made to FME in this release. To view the movie, visit www.safe.com/2004movie. We look forward to your comments and feedback.

FME 2004 includes the first release of brand new application extender targeted at users of ArcGIS 8.3. The FME ArcGIS Extender provides ArcCatalog and ArcMap with read-only direct access to dozens of FME-supported formats. The best news is that we are working hard to expand the power of this extender for the next FME release. For more information, visit www.safe.com/esri.

Please join us in welcoming the FME Spatial Data Provider Server to the Safe product family. The FME SDP Server allows users of OLE DB consumer applications to directly access over 100 FME-supported formats. This enables powerful integrations and customer solutions to be quickly and easily set up and deployed. Customer data can be published directly from its native format or database system without any need for conversion. For more information or to test drive this product, visit www.safe.com/sdp.

Solve challenging data transformation problems by leveraging off the technical expertise and experience of our experts

The Professional Services half of our business has been growing tremendously this past year. We have won several contracts and we see more and more of our Channel Partners submitting our name in their bids. To see this half of our business expand is great news as we see our customers pushing to maximize their use of FME. We currently only provide four types of services, however if you have a special request we can accommodate for that.

1) Solution Assistance is a pay-as-you-go service in which our technical staff provides your clients with assistance to solve their data transformation challenges in the most productive way. With this service, they purchase a block of time and then receive assistance when needed. A bit of help from our experts at key times in their project can pay big dividends!

2) Project Implementation is for those clients that want us to develop a complete solution to their data migration challenge. We deliver the FME workspaces and mapping files and they run them on their data.

3) Product Training is provided several times a year around the world. If you don’t already know this, we are now running training courses directly out of our corporate office in our all-new training facility. By taking advantage of one of our training courses held in our corporate office, you get bonus access to our development team to answer any technical queries you may have. You can view and register for upcoming FME Training sessions at www.safe.com/training.

To read about the various projects we have worked on with numerous clients, visit www.safe.com/success.

To learn more about our professional services, visit www.safe.com/services.

To learn about our regular support services, visit www.safe.com/support.

SpatialDirect provides the data export functionality enabling ESRI’s ArcIMS Web Interface to be used as a data export portal. The Spatial Data is stored in several SDE instances.

IHS Energy (www.ihsenergy.com) enables oil and gas companies worldwide to create and maintain best-in-class decision-making processes by providing and integrating essential Exploration and Production (E&P) information, intuitive software and consulting services.IHS Energy required an Internet product that could display, browse and query the spatial data in the different databases, and also deliver it to clients in a simple and effective way. The tool had to be able to support multiple users with different access rights and be able to connect simultaneously to multiple databases. It also had to support multiple formats, attribute filtering, and integration with a web GIS interface.

Safe Software’s Feature Manipulation Engine (FME) and SpatialDirect were chosen to provide the necessary components to integrate into the existing Web Interface as an Export module. SpatialDirect addressed all of the requirements outlined in the specifications.

Read the complete version of this success story in PDF format here: http://www.safe.com/solutions/success/pdfs/success_ihse.pdf

We continue to add practical examples of solutions achieved by our customers using our products. Do you have an interesting solution using our products? Download and complete the submission form available at http://www.safe.com/success/submit.htm. Select stories will be featured in our release newsletter Did you know… and on our website.

Article chronicles the term we have coined for the market we operate in

If you have not yet had a chance yet to read why we call ourselves The Spatial ETL Experts, we have posted the article to our website. Learn about the who, what, when, where, and why of Spatial ETL! This article is available at www.safe.com/spatialetl.

SpatialDirect

The capabilities of SpatialDirect continue to grow. We’ve recently added support for several new source formats, including IBM DB2 Spatial, OGC Web Feature Servers (WFS), GeoMedia SQL Server, ArcInfo Coverage and PostGIS. New output format exporting includes support for Version 8 Design Files, ESRI GML and Personal Geodatabase, and the export speed for numerous output formats has been increased significantly, especially when many themes having many attributes are selected for output. In addition, a new command-line tool has been added to shut down SpatialDirect in a controlled fashion.

We have also added Selective Load Distribution (SLD) to the most recent production build of SpatialDirect. This will enable multiple FME servers to be independently configured to accept/reject translation requests based on their complexity, selected source themes, output format and server/host name.

If you would like assistance with setting up SpatialDirect, our Professional Services team can help. We offer both Solution Assistance and Project Implementation services for our SpatialDirect clients. Contact sales@safe.com if you are interested.

FME Objects

FME Objects developers using C# or other .NET languages can now easily support a vast number of formats and processing functions without having to code them. FME Objects .NET paves the way for quick development of spatial data processing applications using the new .NET framework and languages such as C#. The FME Objects .NET API is consistent with .NET programming conventions, provides a comprehensive set of symbolic constants, and takes full advantage of the native .NET string and string collection types.

FME Objects developers can also take advantage of our Application Development Assistance. From custom pipeline developments to performance optimizations, our knowledge and experience can help you. Safe Software’s Professional Services team can also help you create your own FME plug-in reader, writer or function using the FME Plug-in SDK. Please contact sales@safe.com if you are interested.

To determine if FME Objects is the right solution for you, complete the FME Objects Online Quote Request form. The functional requirements that you specify will help us to determine the solution that is right for your organization.

Visit us at tradeshows and presentations throughout the world. Our tradeshow and presentation schedule is online at www.safe.com/events. Be sure to check this page often, since we always register to attend new tradeshows and presentation opportunities.

Sign up for an FME Training Session and learn from the experts how to use the essential components of the Feature Manipulation Engine (FME) through hands-on lab training. For a list of upcoming training sessions and to register, visit www.safe.com/training.

Special Offer: Did you attend an FME training course between 1993 and 2000? If so, you might want to learn about the many new FME features. We are offering a special training rate of $500.00 US (regularly $1,000 US) so you can get back up to speed. Contact sales@safe.com for details.

Tell us about a tip, trick, or a cool way you use FME. We’ll include highlights in future issues. Send to: feedback@safe.com.

Achievements

• Safe Software ranked #97 in the official ranking of BC’s Top 100 Technology Companies.
• Safe Software placed #37 in fastest growing companies in British Columbia
• Safe Software was a finalist in 2003 Canadian E-business Leadership Awards
• Safe Software will be celebrating its 10th Anniversary December 13th, 2003

Safe Software Expanding Offices
Safe is currently under construction – we’re undergoing a significant office expansion. When complete, it will be the sixth facilities change since the opening of the first Safe office in 1997!

Annual Maintenance Contract
Keeping your Annual Maintenance Contract (AMC) up to date ensures that you continue to get product updates, priority access to technical support, regular beta software releases and product notification e-mails of recent software enhancements. In addition, you also get a discount on training and solutions assistance. If you’ve just purchased one of our products, your first year of AMC is included. Read about all the benefits of the AMC: www.safe.com/support.

Staff Changes

• Dave Patterson, Account Manager, Sales Group will be leaving us. We wish him the best in his future endeavours.
• Marcel LeBlanc has recently joined our Sales Group as Director of Sales. We look forward to working with him.

Safe Software's GIS Day / 10th Anniversary Open House
Thank You to everyone who attended our recent GIS day and 10th Anniversary Open House. The event was a big success and we enjoyed seeing many of our customers and partners.