We will officially release FME 2003 X2 Thursday June 5, 2003. In the meantime, have a sneak peek at what’s new in X2 at

http://www.safe.com/products/fme/whatsnewx2.htm.

If you're an AMC holder, we invite you to upgrade to this new release. We will also send you the latest version on CD in approximately 2-4 weeks following the release. If you're not an AMC holder, you can still download an evaluation version.

Download the latest version of FME from our Download Centre.

Thank you to those who participated in our FME training survey. Your feedback has been extremely valuable in helping us determine popular FME training locations for the latter half of 2003. We hope you like the dates we have selected for the Fall/Winter period. If none of these times/places work for you or your clients or you would like on-site training, then please contact us at training@safe.com, to suggest a time and place and we’ll work to accommodate you.

Visit http://www.safe.com/training/index.htm for a list of our latest training sessions or to register online. We look forward to seeing you!

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.

Our new success stories include:

IHS Energy
IHS Energy chose Safe Software’s SpatialDirect to provide the necessary components to integrate into ESRI's ArcIMS Web Interface as an Export module.The Spatial Data is stored in several SDE instances.

Gulf Power (A Southern Company)
Using Safe Software's Professional Services, and the tools in the Feature Manipulation Engine (FME), Southern Company was able to dramatically reduce the amount of manual cleanup required for conversion from AutoCAD Release 12 in a DOS environment to an ESRI GIS solution, and to successfully produce both bank and unit records with attributes from the graphical information in an existing system.

The City of Suffolk
The City of Suffolk developed a Visual Basic front end to a series of FME Workbench scripts to export SDE data the same way every time, completely unattended.

Human Early Learning Partnership Lab
Much of the data used by the Human Early Learning Partnership (HELP) lab at the University of British Columbia comes in a flat file format. Using FME, they create spatial files by linking this data to other attribute data with spatial information. After processing, they attach the new data to a geopolitical boundary for presentation.

Are you looking to quickly solve your data transformation challenges? Ask us about our new Solution Assistance service, which provides you an opportunity to save time and money by tapping into our expertise on a pay-per-use option for advanced application support. You can purchase a block of 10 hours and use it up on an as-needed basis. You will get our team's dedicated support throughout the life cycle of you development, when you need it.

Visit http://www.safe.com/services/ to learn more.

Keeping your FME Annual Maintenance Contract (AMC) up to date ensures that you continue to get FME 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 solution assistance. If you’ve just purchased FME, your first year of AMC is included.

Read about all the benefits of the AMC: http://www.safe.com/support/amc.htm

Have you tried our web-based data download and translation software yet? Be sure to give it a try, as you will be amazed at how it enables web-mapping applications to distribute spatial data in any FME-support format and coordinate system.

Test-drive it now!

To assist institutions in providing their students with cutting edge spatial data translation and transformation technology, we have developed an academic technology transfer plan. The Safe Software Education Program provides educators and their students with the FME Suite of products. If you know of education institutions or graduates that would be interested in using our products, do them a favour by spreading the word about us and having them contact education@safe.com.

Nick Ranicar, Product Lead, SpatialDirect, will be taking a one year leave of absence from Safe Software to pursue his travel ambitions throughout Central and South America. Nick is sad to be leaving the team at Safe but intends to return to the fold once his desire to travel has been satiated. In his absence, the SpatialDirect team will continue to provide the highest levels of support and service that you have come to expect of them and of Safe Software.

All queries regarding SpatialDirect should now be directed to Kieran Jones (kjones@safe.com).

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.

Visit us at upcoming tradeshows throughout North America including ESRI UC 2003 in San Diego, CA.

See the upcoming events page on our website for a current list of upcoming tradeshows.

Safe Software Adds OGC WFS Client Support to FME

Safe Software Sponsors Open Data Consortium (ODC) Project

University of British Columbia uses Safe Software’s Spatial ETL Technologies to Integrate Health Information