How FME logs reader information

FME works by pushing features through the workspace on an individual basis, and it does this as soon as each feature is read from the source data. Therefore it's sometimes difficult to calculate the time spent reading the data because workspace processing time will be grouped in with it.

For example,"Emptying factory pipeline" below marks the point at which FME has finished reading data.

2006-02-03 11:37:47| 342.7|  0.5|INFORM|Emptying factory pipeline

Here it took 342.7 seconds (about 6 minutes) to read the source data. But, this includes time spent processing the features within the workspace. When all the transformers were removed from this workspace, the log read:

2006-02-03 14:44:43|  66.5|  0.3|INFORM|Emptying factory pipeline

This tells us that 80% of the time was spent processing the data and only 20% reading it. In this case, you should check your workspace to make sure it is as efficient as possible and that there are no unnecessary transformers.

Tip: If you are concerned about the reading performance of a workspace, disable the readers from the transformers in Workbench and run the translation again. Then compare the log files. It may be that a lot of the time you assume was spent reading data is actually used by the workspace transformers and this will show where to concentrate your performance efforts.