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Geoinformatics_06-2009
event transforming the inconceivable into reality fme 2009 user conference 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. by mary jo wagner the real-time 3d visualization and information delivery of real-time events. to be sure, all is still not resolved in the datasharing 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 googlefast 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. september 2009 president don murray (l) and vice-president dale lutz start the fme fun. an agnostic approach 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 50
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