Sep. 21-22, 2006

1. v FME Worldwide User Conference - Vancouver Sep. 21-22, 2006 Keynote: History and Currency of the FME Mark Sondheim & Peter Friesen, Integrated Land Management Bureau, Government of British Columbia

2. 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 ! Keynote History and Currency of the FME, as told by Customers 0 and 1 Really! This is true!!

3. from 1990 documentation What was the problem? We needed to share data among members of a diverse community. And we didn’t know how …

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

5. Seamless Interoperability The Vision from 1990 documentation

6. Geomatics Information Architecture Levels of Abstraction,with interfaces between them We needed a way to describe geospatial data models and the data sets adhering to the models from 1990 documentation

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

8. Canadian Council OnGeomaticsInterchange Format S-57 International Hydrographic Organization Canada Map Data Interchange Format DIgital Geographic Information ExchangeSTandard Ontario National TransferFormat NATO United Kingdom Spatial Data Transfer Specification Spatial ArchiveandInterchange Format United States British Columbia Serious Competition!

9. Spatial ArchiveandInterchange Format British Columbia Serious Competition! and the winner is ... This was in 1991. A few years later DIGEST wasadded as another standard for Canada.

10. In 1991 he sent it to Michael Stonebreaker at UC Berkeley Michael Stonebreaker Who in turn showed it to his associate, Kenn Kenn Gardels Kenn sent it to Kurt at the ConstructionEngineering Research Laboratory Kurt Buehler SAIF, Berkeley and the US Army Corps of Engineers The initial work on SAIF was shown to David Skea of Minerva Research • 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

11. OGC: GML Henry Kucera, Peter and Markmake 19 submissions to an ISO technical committee from 1992 through 1994 Ron Lake OGF: OGIS ISOSQL/MM ISO 191xx A series of ISO approvedGeographic Informationstandards SAIF can be consideredas GML Version 0 Evolution and Convergence SAIF

12. CGSB • Canadian General Standards Board CGSB 171.1-95-CAN/CGSB Title: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

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

14. Object Syntax Notation Dale and colleagues at MDA developed OSN

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

16. SystemB SystemA SystemC SystemD SAIF:CSN & OSN 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 • We wanted to support relational to relational mappings • Object to relational mappings • Object to object mappings

17. FMEmeta-model GML Oracle An insight SystemB SystemA SystemC SystemD Dale and Donrealized that the intermediary … … could bein-memory and need not be a file. SAIF

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.)

19. XDR • In 1992 Dale and his colleagues at MDA carry out this effort • It does not prove practical either

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

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

22. FMEBC and GDBC 1995-1996 TRIM MapInfo TRIM Microstation TRIM ESRI ArcGen TRIM - SAIF 1:20000 Base Map TRIM MOEP TRIM ESRI Shape TRIM ESRI E00 The TRIM Translator Completed!

23. Van Police Services DRA Digital Road Atlas TRIM-EBM BC Ambulance Service BC Hydro RCMP BTM Watershed Atlas TRIM Quality Assurance EComm FME and GDBC Weapon of Mass Transformation! The Tool of Choice

24. Ministry BusinessApplications Fish Wizard Find Data(Discovery Service) Forest Map View iMapBC Integrated Land & Resource Registry(Legal Interests on Crown Land) Recreation Base MapOnline Store Conservation Data Centre Download Data(Distribution Service) Seed Map Mineral Titles Online Petroleum Titles Online Etc. Consolidated Resource Information Locally Published Information Consolidated Tenure Information Base Map & Imagery Information Natural Resource Information Centre FME is a major part of the solution

25. 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 Land and ResourceData Warehouse Statistics

26. iMapBC

27. FrontCounter BC Solution Directional Arrow on a Stream?

28. Then and Now • Consistency, year after year • Dependability, year after year

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

30. Thanks for listening! peter.g.friesen@gov.bc.ca mark.sondheim@gov.bc.ca