You are here: FME Workbench > About the Feature Inspector

About the Feature Inspector

Workbench provides tools that allow you to inspect data at the feature level with the Feature Inspector, and at the dataset level with the FME Universal Viewer/Data Inspector. Using the Feature Inspector can significantly reduce the amount of time it takes to author and test a workspace.

Instead of looking at the log window for information during or after a translation, or routing output to Inspector transformers so you can view the features, you can analyze features in real time as they move through the workspace.

You can inspect the properties (attributes and geometry) of an individual feature without having to send the workspace to an Inspector application.
If you want to add a transformer, especially to a large workspace or a workspace that reads a great deal of input data, you can see the effect it will have on a feature without having to wait for the entire workspace to complete.

How to Enable Feature Inspection

Before you can run a translation with feature inspection, you will have to set at least one inspection point in the workspace.

Select a link until it is highlighted and showing squares on both ends of the link. Right-click to display the command menu and click Inspection Point > Add Inspection Point. You can also set an inspection point by selecting the link and pressing F9. When the inspection point is defined, it will appear in the workspace as a bold, blue line.

There are several ways to use the Feature Inspector in a workspace:

If you already know the areas of the workspace that you want to inspect, you can set the inspection points. When you run the workspace, the Feature Inspector will stop at each inspection point.
You can set the workspace to stop at each link in the workspace (even if you have not set it as an inspection point).
You can run through the workspace, ignoring all inspection points, and pause the processing at any location.
You can set specific conditions and the Feature Inspector will stop at only the links that meet those conditions.

To run a workspace using the feature inspection capability, click the Run Translation with Inspection tool:

Note that there are three Run buttons. Make sure you click the one that starts the Feature Inspector.

You can also click Inspection > Run Translation with Inspection or use the Shift + F5 keyboard shortcut.

Using the Feature Inspector

How to Use the Feature Inspector

About the Feature Inspector Window

Editing Inspection Point Parameters