Will Become the First Complete Spatial ETL Tool
Vancouver, British Columbia, May 7, 2007 – With today’s unveiling of FME 2007, Safe Software announced that the company’s translation and transformation platform for vector data now includes Spatial ETL capability for raster data.
"FME 2007 provides raster and vector integration capability that has long been missing from the GIS professional’s toolkit," said Don Murray, Safe Software’s Co-Founder. "With FME 2007, GIS professionals can now work with both raster and vector data within one complete spatial ETL solution. Using the familiar FME Workbench interface, FME users who need to work with raster data can now harness the extract, transform, and load capabilities that were previously only available for vector data. You could say that FME 2007 effectively gives raster data the vector treatment."
When asked how well this traditionally vector tool performs with raster datasets, Dale Lutz, Safe Software’s other Co-Founder responded, “FME 2007 steps up to the plate with the speed and agility required to manipulate gigabytes or even terabytes of raster data. User feedback regarding the raster clipping, resampling, mosaicing and reprojecting tools in our beta releases has been overwhelmingly positive. We believe FME is the only Spatial ETL tool users will ever need.”
According to Don Murray, FME 2007 represents “one of the most significant product releases in the history of Safe.” Taken together, FME 2007 includes over 1800 enhancements – three times more than FME 2006 GB.
FME 2007 supports over 20 new formats; new raster formats include HDF4/HDF4-EOS ASTER/Hyperion formats, ERDAS Raw, and RadarSAT2. For the first time, a WMS reader is also included in FME. Newly added vector capability includes read-only support for ASPRS LIDAR Data Exchange Format, in addition to read and write support for the Aeronautical Information Exchange Model (AIXM 4.5), GeoRSS feeds, and GeoConcept – a format used extensively in France.
FME 2007 ESRI Edition will include support for ArcGIS Engine and Server deployments while Autodesk users can now take advantage of the FME FDO Provider that is included in this release. Enhanced Spatial ETL capability for loading raster data into Oracle 10g and ArcSDE will improve workflow efficiencies for both Oracle and ESRI users.
Users who need to display their data in multiple languages will benefit from enhanced support for text-based formats that support Unicode character encoding schemes. The MRFCleaner, a geometry cleaning transformer that made its debut in FME 2006 GB, now cleans 3D data. (See www.safe.com/mrfclean.) Linear optimization technology, available through a new Curvefitter transformer, allows users to replace multiple line segments with arcs, producing more accurate line work while significantly reducing file size.
FME 2007 will be generally available by the end of June 2007. Evaluation software of the FME 2007 Release Candidate is available for immediate download at www.safe.com/tryit.
About Safe Software
Established in 1993, Safe Software is the maker of FME, a powerful spatial ETL (Extract, Transform and Load) platform that enables translation, transformation, and web-based distribution of geospatial data in over 190 GIS, CAD, raster and database formats. FME is used in over 116 countries by all levels of government, the utilities sector, and resource industries including mining, oil and gas, and forestry. The latest release of FME features over 13 new transformers for raster data.
For more information on FME 2007 Highlights and FME’s Raster Capability visit www.safe.com/2007.