Reflections on the Release of FME 2010

As of today, FME 2010 is available!

It is with great excitement that we have completed FME 2010, a release that saw nearly 1,000 of its new features come as a direct result of customer feedback. Post-release, we will now see how well we have met the needs of the FME community. How well we have done in giving users the functionality that they want? Where have we not quite hit the target? Time will tell as we continue to work closely with our community and hear what they have to say in this new year.

With each release of FME we strive to not only meet the needs of the FME community but to also surpass the previous release in four key ways.

• First, each release of FME must be faster than the last. We have succeeded here as FME 2010 is significantly faster than FME 2009. It is around 19% faster on multi-core windows machines and an average of 4% faster for everything else. If you are working on large workspaces then you will also find that they load 16% faster. If you work with raster then you will be happy to know that FME 2010 uses about half the memory and is also up to 5% faster.
• Second, each release of FME must be even easier to use. Here we are very excited as we think that once users use FME Workbench in FME 2010 they will not be able to go back to FME 2009 – the user experience is that much better! This feat is accomplished with additions such as FME’s new “Quick Add” capability that greatly reduces the number of mouse clicks that are required to build workspaces. We have also spent a great deal of time looking at how FME is being used and working to ensure that tasks can be done with fewer

  transformers

  than ever before. Here is just

  one example

  that shows the same task done in FME 2008 and in FME 2010 done by our own guru Dmitri (scroll to the bottom of the linked page to see the big difference in time!). The goal with all of this is not to just make things possible, but for users to see solutions and say “Wow, that is easy! I can do that!”
• Third, each release of FME must be of higher quality. This is something that we put a great deal of thought and effort into here at Safe. We have a fantastic team that is dedicated to building systems whose whole purpose is merely to test the components that make up FME Desktop and Server. This is no small task as FME is a complex and very large body of software. Documentation is also a key aspect of meeting the quality objective and again is something that can always be taken to the next level. The importance of documentation cannot be overstated. In recognizing this, we’ve inserted automated transformer help directly into the GUI for FME 2010 – when you select a transformer, the related help is automatically displayed!
• Last but not least, with each new release of FME our support must also get even better and with FME 2010 we are moving to a new corporate support system to do just that. When we think about FME at Safe we think about the entire solution for our community and this is not just the product. You will also see us improve our support by increasing activity on social media such as

  Twitter

  in an effort to increase the communication with all those that use and experiment with FME.

With FME 2010 out the door there is no better time than now to thank the dedicated team at Safe that I get to be a part of. I also want to thank the FME community for sharing their visions, ideas, and time working with us to not only identify what we should be doing next but working closely with us to make it happen and giving us the feedback that we need to make all aspects of FME better. At the end of the day what makes releasing a new version of FME so exciting is the tremendous teamwork by so many people.

Please keep the comments coming as we need help from everyone in the community to make the next release of FME even better and even more useful.

Don Murray

Don is the co-founder and President of Safe Software. Safe Software was founded originally doing work for the BC Government on a project sharing spatial data with the forestry industry. During that project Don and other co-founder, Dale Lutz, realized the need for a data integration platform like FME. When Don’s not raving about how much he loves XML, you can find Don working with the team at Safe to take the FME product to the next level. You will also find him on the road talking with customers and partners to learn more about what new FME features they’d like to see.