What’s Great 2014 – FME Server

“What’s Great” is a technical summary of all the new and updated functionality in a particular version of FME. This article covers What’s Great in FME Server 2014. If you missed part 1, go here to read about the updates to FME Desktop 2014.

FME 2014 has added support for several big data applications, including Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon RDS, Amazon Redshift, Amazon S3, and Google BigQuery.

Amazon Web Services

• Added support for Amazon Web Services to the FME Server Notification Service. FME Server now has publishers to receive notifications from the Amazon Simple Notification Service and Amazon Simple Queue Service. Also added subscribers to send messages to the Amazon Simple Queue Service and Amazon Simple Storage Service.
• New transformers (SNSSender, SQSSender, SQSReceiver) for sending to and receiving messages inside a workspace.
• New transformers (S3Uploader, S3Downloader) for loading data in and out of Amazon S3.
• Added support for Amazon RDS hosted databases such as MySQL, Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, and PostgreSQL / PostGIS.

Web Sockets

• New WebSocket publisher (to receive messages) and subscriber (for sending messages to WebSocket-supported clients).

Directory Watch Publisher

• Added ability to monitor a directory and run a job when files have been modified.

FME Server Web User Interface

• Added a Topic monitor view to the web interface for a live view of notification service activity.

• Resource Management: implemented a centralized repository for data and resources (custom formats, custom transformers and coordinate systems) to be uploaded, stored, and managed on FME Server.

• FME Server Migration: added a web interface to handle FME Server migrations and backups.

• Jobs: added ability to view logs for jobs while they are running.
• Schedules: added ability to set topics to notify on success or failure in scheduling interface.

REST API

• New look and feel for the FME Server REST API documentation.

• Improved API calls – more granular methods allow for greater control.
• Input data validation.
• Improved error handling.
• Test API calls directly in the web interface.

Workflow Management

• FMEServerJobSubmitter will no longer take up an additional engine when set to wait for a job to complete. This will allow for the creation of a controller workspace that can run multiple server jobs at once or run other jobs depending on the status of a previous one.