QGIS 1.7 is Officially Released

June 20, 2011 Leave a Comment

So this awesome happened over the weekend:

We are pleased to announce the latest release in our 1.X series of releases. To download your copy, please visit the QGIS download page. This release is named after the town of Wroclaw in Poland. The Department of Climatology and Atmosphere Protection, University of Wroclaw kindly hosted our last developer meeting in November 2010.

The release has some great new symbology and data management improvements continuing the push of QGIS as a full fledged GIS client.  I use QGIS much more than any GIS client these days[ref]Most of that has to do with me being on Mac OS X but it is a reality.[/ref] and coupled with FME, there isn’t anything I can’t do.

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FME 2011 is in the House

January 18, 2011 2 Comments

Well that yearly update has happened once again. Safe Software has released FME 2011 on the world. Rather than rehash some good resources on the subject, let me point you to a couple that should showcase what is new:

I’m looking forward to working with 2011 myself. WeoGeo’s ETL functionality is built on Safe’s FME Server which is why I’m never worried a customer will come up with a format that FME doesn’t support (unless it is *cough* Revit *cough* Dale *cough* Don *cough*).

Now that 2011 has happened I’m looking forward to the 2012 beta builds.

*pause* FME goes to eleven!

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FME Webinar: Practical Techniques for Loading Data into SQL Server

December 9, 2010 3 Comments

Ed Katibah says that there will be a Webinar next week on loading data into SQL Server Spatial.

One of the most often asked questions about SQL Server Spatial is “How do I load data into the spatial types?”. Safe Software has long provided solutions for this dilemma with their excellent ETL tool, Feature Manipulation Engine (FME).  On December 14th, Safe will be presenting an FME Webinar entitled “Practical Techniques for Loading Data into SQL Server”.

Sounds interesting as Esri doesn’t really give you the right tools to load data into SQL Server Spatial like FME does.

Tis the season for a webinar!

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Safe FME 2010

January 14, 2010 10 Comments

So yea I’m a little late with this as I’ve been really busy this week. Still I wanted to get out the word (assuming that you pay zero attention elsewhere) that Safe has released FME 2010. Now I’ve got no scientific data to back this up, but I’ve imagined that they were done with FME 2010 for a couple weeks now, but had to wait until the new year arrived before they could release it officially. I of course can understand given they probably had everything printed up beforehand and who wants to be they guy telling the accountants that they have to reprint all their material because they wanted to release in 2009.

Or maybe not…

OK so some really great things in 2010 that I’m looking forward to using in production is the improved metadata support and of course the engine that drives WeoGeo, FME Server.  Oh Canada!

We hope you enjoy the beer, oh, like I mean the ETL, eh.

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WeoGeo at the 2009 ESRI User Conference

July 21, 2009 8 Comments

Well my first day at WeoGeo actually was the first day of the ESRI UC.  Nothing like starting out at the most important GIS conference of the year.  My first day at WeoGeo also corresponded with WeoGeo’s first time at the ESRI UC itself.

The WeoGeo booth at the ESRI 2009 UC

The WeoGeo booth at the ESRI 2009 UC

There has been much written up about the conference, but I thought I’d hit on some of the things that came up at the booth listening to people talk about problems they are having with content management. Read more of this post

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Off to the FME User Conference

June 9, 2009 3 Comments

Well I’m off to Whistler, BC and the 2009 FME User Conference.  It should be a blast and if you are going as well lets meet up for some drinks.

They still play hockey up there don’t they?

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Safe FME with Open Source and ESRI’s new developer blog

April 9, 2009 4 Comments

Michael Weisman wrote up an informative blog post on how you can use FME with open source software and tools.  The killer example here for most folks is the ability to get open source data formats and servers into ArcGIS Desktop.

The wide range of formats FME can write to can also allow you to send data into open source platforms from popular non-open source back-ends like SDE or Oracle. FDO can be used to pull data from any format into MapGuide Open Source, and with FME Server you can stream live data out of any source we support into a format which is compatible with your open source client.

Even the Easter Bunny wants to consume open standards

In addition ESRI is re-branding their ArcObjects Blog to ArcGIS Developer Blog.  Personally I think it was a good decision, ArcObjects is such a small part of the ESRI Developer community and they need to continue their progress of reaching out to the masses that deal with RESTful APIs, Flex and Silverlight, Python and the JSAPIs.

Time to put that baby to REST...

Time to put that baby to REST...

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Safe FME User Conference 2009 and State of the Map 2009

March 31, 2009 2 Comments

Two great conferences are approaching, and one has a early bird deadline right around the corner.

The Safe FME User Conference 2009 (June 11th & 12th) early bird rate ends April 3rd, 2009.  If you are planning on attending, you should jump on the savings ($875 vs $2250) right away.  Don’t forget this year it is in beautiful Whistler, BC rather than “dirty old” Vancouver, BC. (I’m joking of course, they have it rough up there in BC).  Me, I’ve never been to the FME UC or Whistler, but I’m going this year and I’m excited and so should you.  If there is ever a reason to take a look at FME it is now when you have to do more, with less.

The State of the Map (July 10th – 12th) is also open for registration.  I’ve never been and probably won’t be going this year (I’ll be here), but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try if you won’t be going to San Diego in July.

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Safe Releases FME 2009

January 12, 2009 4 Comments

Today Safe Software released FME 2009.  I’ve was unable to take the 2009 beta for a spin (being busy is a good thing these days), but there are three new formats supported that really have me excited; CityGML 1.0, Adobe Geospatial PDF and OpenStreetMap XML (come to think of it Autodesk 3ds support might come in handy at the old architecture studio).  Plus the 20% performance increase over FME 2008 will be a welcome change of pace from software that gets slower as it “improves”.  The improved user interface of Workbench should increase usability for those who are used to other geoprocessing software packages.  Safe has a “What’s Great” brochure available that outlines the improvements in more detail.

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Sharing the File Geodatabase

November 5, 2008 13 Comments

There are really good reasons to use the File Geodatabase in the ESRI world over the shapefile and Personal Geodatabase, but it doesn’t mean it is easy to share.  Sean Gorman knows that the more file formats he supports, the more likely people (especially GIS pros) will be using GeoCommons.  I suppose the simple answer for Sean is to buy a license of FME Server and support everything and anything people upload.  The cost of that solution might not make business sense just yet for him so I suppose is the lack of ESRI Geodatabase support (or any other format) limiting you when you want to share data?  I like the idea of uploading a Geodatabase full of datasets at one time, but sharing a folder/file based dataset is difficult enough on a LAN, let along the internet.  Is converting to shapefiles too much to ask for people who want to share data on services such as GeoCommons?  

WeoGeo partnered with Safe Software to bring this kind of datasharing (among other features of FME Server) to the cloud web so there might be solutions that are cheaper than outright licensing FME Server to bring translate capability to Web 2.0 services.  If that can be coupled with Amazon Web Services pricing (pay for what you use rather than a traditional license) there could be something that many people take advantage of.

 

And of course you could export out any layer in GeoCommons Finder! to any of the 200+ FME supported formats.

And of course you could export out any layer in GeoCommons Finder! to any of the 200+ FME supported formats.

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