Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
Sep. 21-22, 2006v FME Worldwide User Conference - Vancouver
Keynote: History and Currency of the FMEMark Sondheim & Peter Friesen,Integrated Land Management Bureau,Government of British Columbia
A History of the FME 2
Keynote
History and Currency of the FME,
as told by Customers 0 and 1
A high-stakes story of drama, intrigue,
failure, more failure, and then …
success, success, success !
A high-stakes story of drama, intrigue,
failure, more failure, and then …
success, success, success !
Really! This is true!!
A History of the FME 3from 1990 documentation
What was the problem?
We needed to share data
among members of a
diverse community.
And we didn’t know how …
A History of the FME 4
How big was the problem?
It was local. It was global. It was an impediment to
many business operations.
How could we think about the problem?
from 1990 documentation
A History of the FME 5
The Vision
Seamless
Interoperability
from 1990 documentation
A History of the FME 6
Geomatics Information Architecture
from 1990 documentation
Levels of Abstraction,
with interfaces between them
We needed a way to describe
geospatial data models and the
data sets adhering to the
models
A History of the FME 7
SAIF emerges
Mark and Peter chair national committees looking for a Canadian standard
They also decide to enter the fray
SAIF is developed by the BC govt.
It is designed to meet criteria defined by these committees
The last entry in the race, it competes against various international standards
A History of the FME 8
Serious Competition!
National TransferFormat
United Kingdom
Map DataInterchange Format
Ontario
Canadian Council OnGeomatics
Interchange FormatCanada
DIgital Geographic Information
ExchangeSTandard
NATO
Spatial Archive andInterchange Format
British Columbia
S-57International Hydrographic
Organization
United States
Spatial DataTransfer Specification
A History of the FME 9
Serious Competition!
Spatial Archive andInterchange Format
British Columbia
This was in 1991. A few years later DIGEST wasadded as another standard for Canada.
A History of the FME 10
SAIF, Berkeley and the US Army Corps of Engineers
SAIF became the basis of the early work by the Open GIS Foundation, which was formed in 1994 by Kurt, Kenn, David Schell and others, and which later was renamed the Open Geospatial Consortium
Mark took part in these efforts from 1991 through 1995
David Skea
The initial work on SAIF was shown to David Skea of Minerva Research
Michael Stonebreaker
In 1991 he sent it to Michael Stonebreaker at UC Berkeley
Kenn Gardels
Who in turn showed it to his associate, Kenn
Kurt Buehler
Kenn sent it to Kurt at the ConstructionEngineering Research Laboratory
A History of the FME 11
Evolution and Convergence
SAIF
ISOSQL/MM
OGF:OGIS
Henry Kucera, Peter and Markmake 19 submissions to an
ISO technical committee from 1992 through 1994
ISO 191xx
A series of ISO approvedGeographic Information
standards
OGC:GML
Ron Lake
SAIF can be consideredas GML Version 0
A History of the FME 12
CGSB
Canadian General Standards Board
CGSB 171.1-95-CAN/CGSBTitle:
CGIS-SAIF Canadian Geomatics Interchange Standard - Spatial
Archive and Interchange Format: Formal Definition
(Release 3.2)
Canadian General Standards Board
Publication Date:Jan 1, 1995
A History of the FME 13
Class Syntax Notation
<GeographicObject subclass: StreamSection::MS attributes: substrate Composition::MS bankFullWidth Real32 restricted: position.geometry: ArcDirected>
<Enumeration subclass: Composition::MS values: gravelly sandy fineGrained comments: "Three options for the composition of the bottom of a stream are available.">
from 1995 documentation
A History of the FME 14
Object Syntax Notation
Dale and colleagues at MDA developed OSN
A History of the FME 15
How translators worked
A big correlation table
Used typically to transfer feature coded data from a data producer to a data consumer
For example, a mapping company produces topographic data to a given specification and delivers it to the government
Hard coded and conceptualized as a thin pipe between systems
A History of the FME 16
Dale & Donthink this is neat!
How we thought they should work
A CSN/OSN file is an intermediary
Because SAIF allows for semantic richness, we don’t have to look for the lowest common denominator.
In fact, we can add intelligence to the data
SAIF:CSN & OSN
SystemA
SystemB
SystemC
SystemD
We wanted to support relational to relational mappings
Object to relational mappings
Object to object mappings
A History of the FME 17
An insight
SystemA
SystemB
SystemC
SystemD
FMEmeta-model
SAIF OracleGML
Dale and Donrealized that the intermediary …
… could bein-memory and
need not be a file.
A History of the FME 18
An ugly secret !!
In 1991 when SAIF was approved as a national interchange standard, we could describe data but we had no practical encoding scheme. We could neither archive nor interchange data!
We tried ISO 8211, originally developed at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory to hold chemical data. It was used by SDTS. We worked with its inventor, but to no avail.
We then tried eXternal Data Representation from Sun Microsystems.
(XML hadn’t been invented yet.)
A History of the FME 19
XDR
In 1992 Dale and his colleagues at MDA carry out this effort It does not prove practical either
A History of the FME 20
ASCII?
(Note the company that did this work!)
The idea was to stay with ASCII, but zip it into a series of blocks, as zip had size limitations
The approach proved effective
A History of the FME 21
MoF Data Exchange Pilot
1994 – RFP announced for translation package to convert industry formats to/from MoF format using SAIF as the exchange intermediary
RFP won by Safe Software
Did the deliverable from this project provide impetus for the creation of the FME?
1995 - FMEBC purchased by the province to provide translation capability to/from SAIF for an increasing number of formats
A History of the FME 22
TRIMESRI ArcGen
FMEBC and GDBC 1995-1996
TRIM - SAIF1:20000 Base Map
TRIMMOEP
TRIMMapInfo
TRIMESRI Shape
TRIMMicrostation
TRIMESRI E00
The TRIM Translator Completed!
A History of the FME 23
FME and GDBC
TRIMQuality Assurance
DRADigital Road Atlas
TRIM-EBM
EComm
BC Ambulance Service
BC Hydro
Van Police Services
RCMP
BTM
Watershed Atlas
The Tool of ChoiceWeapon of Mass Transformation!
A History of the FME 24
Natural Resource Information Centre
Locally Published
Information
Consolidated Tenure
Information
Consolidated Resource
Information
Base Map & Imagery Information
Integrated Land & Resource Registry
(Legal Interests on Crown Land)
Base MapOnline Store
iMapBC Find Data(Discovery Service)
Download Data(Distribution Service)
Forest Map View
Recreation
Fish Wizard
Seed Map
Conservation Data Centre
Etc.
Mineral Titles OnlinePetroleum Titles Online
Ministry BusinessApplications
FME is a major part of the solution
A History of the FME 25
Land and ResourceData Warehouse Statistics
Over 300 datasets 2,200 spatial data layers currently
available including associated attribute data
Over 14,500 metadata records Supports 160 applications 5 gigabytes downloaded daily Users:
Public Industry > 5,000 BCeID Government
A History of the FME 26
iMapBC
A History of the FME 27
FrontCounter BC Solution
Directional Arrow on a Stream?
A History of the FME 28
Then and Now
Consistency, year after year Dependability, year after year
A History of the FME 29
Some final comments …
The FME is an outgrowth of the efforts on SAIF in the early 1990s
Dale and Don contributed to those efforts and with insight and effective engineering developed the FME
Because the FME is so enormously useful for model to model transformations and for many kinds of geoprocessing, it has become a cornerstone element of an ever increasing number of geospatial developments
The FME will continue to play a key role in interoperability, as it has now for a decade
