Fooling FME Into Extracting Text Data From PDFs

One big hole in the list of 300+ data types that FME can read is Adobe PDF. But what if there was a way to “fool” FME into reading PDF files so you could at least pull out text data? What if it could be automated using FME Server? This presentation will discuss how these challenges were conquered with FME to automate extracting text data from British Columbia Land Title PDF Documents. The process allows FME Server to receive the original PDF documents through email, extract detailed attribute data from the text in the PDFs, populate a SQL database and link the individual title data records to BC Parcel fabric geographic features.