Learning Objectives

After completing this lesson, you’ll be able to:

Define a workspace.
Define a reader.
Define a writer.
Define a feature type.
Define a feature.
Understand the hierarchical structure of workspaces.

Workspace Components

A workspace is the primary element in an FME translation and is responsible for storing a translation definition. Think of a workspace as the container for all the translation functionality, which is stored in the following components.

Workspaces do not store the data they work with. Data is represented in the workspace as file paths, URLs, or Connections. The workspace provides FME with instructions on how to carry out the data integration workflow.

If you want to include your data in your workspace, e.g., for sharing, you can save it as a template.

Readers and Writers

A reader is the FME term for a component in a translation that reads a source dataset. Likewise, a writer is a component that writes to a destination dataset.

Entries in the Navigator window represent readers and writers.

Feature Types

Feature type is the FME term that describes a subset of records. Common alternatives for this term are layer, table, sheet, feature class, and object class. For example, each layer in a DWG file or each table in an Oracle database is defined by a feature type in FME.

Feature types are represented by objects that appear on the Workbench canvas.

Features

Features are the smallest single components of an FME translation.

Features can be seen in the feature counts along connection lines, as single rows or pieces of geometry in Visual Preview, and in the Feature Information Window, where you can view everything FME knows about a single feature.

Relationships

Each workspace can contain multiple readers and writers, each of which can have multiple feature types, with multiple features. They exist in a hierarchy that looks like this:

Workspace hierarchy diagram

A workspace with multiple readers and writers might look like this:

Example workspace with hierarchy annotated

This workspace has two readers (each with three feature types) and three writers (with one, two, and one feature types). Each reader and writer has a different format, and each has a different name for its feature types.