In August, Chris Duncan and Sam Drummond joined hundreds of professionals at the FME User Conference in Vancouver. The event spread over five days packed with industry updates, user stories and inspiring thought leadership from keynote speakers including Rick Hansen (Canada’s man in motion), Matt Luhn from Pixar and of course Safe Software Founders Don Murray and Dale Lutz.  

We live in a time where data about almost everything is being recorded and stored. With more sensors and business systems more data is being created. Safe has a legacy of making it their business to be on the cutting edge of new data trends so that FME is able to connect, transform and automate from virtually any source. At FMEUC22, Safe renewed their commitment to helping maximise the value of data and shared about the ongoing improvements and enhancements to the FME Platform. The most exciting takeaways for us were:

FME Job Services
A new feature for running distributed jobs on FME server. We look forward to deploying independent FME Engines wherever they are needed and securely control them from a central FME Server. Imagine using your FME Cloud Server in AWS to process files on a Azure Blob using a standalone FME engine within the same Azure Data Centre.

Not just better than code… but better than coding
FME’s visual drag-and-drop designer makes building data flows fun and easy because you don’t need to be able to write code to use it! In 2023, Safe has a major focus on aligning the FME developer experience with a DevOps lifecycle, so that FME is not just better than code, it’s better than coding!!!

Seamlessly connect to any API
FME can already connect to hundreds of different API’s sources, throw in the HTTPCaller and this grows to thousands. To improve the user exprience, Safe are working on a new python SDK for building API connectors complete with a GUI builder! We expect that FME Developers will be able to develop their own API connectors, have them verified by Safe and published on a refreshed FME Hub.

It is a great time to be an FME developer! If you feel like you missed out this year, be sure to attend FME User Conference 2023 in Bonn, Germany!