How I Learned to Stop Worrying about different data formats in Smallworld and Love the FME or GE Smallworld's FME SOM!

FME (originally, the “Feature Manipulation Engine”) was designed to overcome many of the problems associated with traditional translation methods.

Traditionally the software used to translate data to a different format had limited capabilities. Most of the data would be forced through a limited data model causing much of the meaning to be lost in translation. We call this a “thin-pipe translation”, But not anymore.

Primarily FME is used as an export and import tool for Smallworld. There is a less-known capability called FME SOM, which helps to open different formats in Smallworld. For example, if you have an Esri Geodatabase file format and want to open it in Smallworld you can use FME SOM.

The following figure illustrates the process of configuring and opening an FME data source as a dataset by using the FME SOM.

The FME SOM includes a custom Configuration Interface Agent, used for setting up the access to the original data source. This is a two-stage process — the first establishes the FME settings for the data source and the second configures the data source as a Smallworld dataset.

FME facilities are used to identify the data source, its format and any settings required by the format. These details are stored in an FME configuration file (default extension .fme) for use by the FME SOM.

The FME SOM opens the data source, checks the contents and generates a bounding box; details are stored in a SOM configuration file (default extension .cfg).

When the SOM configuration file is saved, the dataset can be opened by the Configuration Interface Agent itself using the SOC Configuration dialog box.

For more through information you can refer to the GE Smallworld Documentation. here

Opening Esri File Geodatabase in Smallworld using FME SOM

Steps

1. Start the Smallworld application with SOM product loaded

C:\sw5XX\core\bin\x86\gis.exe -a "C:\sw5XX\soms\config\gis_aliases" -e "C:\sw5xx\core\config\environment.bat" soms_open

2. Start SOM Application

3. Open Configure SOM from Tools menu

4. From drop-down list select FME Object

5. From the Maps menu, Select Add Files

6. Select a directory and provide a name for the fme file

Please note that the file will be created by the Smallworld and you should not point to an already available fme file created by FME Workbench.

7. set FME Reader Parameters

As soon as providing a name and pressing on the ok button, fmw_sas.exe will start and you can specify the parameters for the file format or database you want to open in Smallworld. For our example we are trying to open an Esri File Geodatabase in Smallworld. > Geodatabase coordinate system can be checked from the ArcGIS Software.

8. Save the configuration file and open the dataset

Notes:

1. If FME Objects is not available in the list, you need to load the sas_fme_plugin module
2. In SOM Product versions 5.2.10 and 5.30, I faced an error. Maybe it's related to the 32bit FME version I installed and these products are not compatible, Or, there are some issues with the sas_fme.exe file in these versions. In any case, it's better to be careful when using these product versions, especially with 5.3. Usually, the new version should be easier to config, unfortunately, this is not the case with Smallworld, sometimes GE folks simply make your life harder.

   FME SOM: UserPipeline file '..\...\soms\etc\x86\sas_fme.som_pipeline' does not exist