Licensing options for this format begin with FME Professional Edition.
Note: Usage of the FME Server Repository reader or writer requires that you have a running FME Server that can be reached by your machine through the network.
The FME Server Repository Reader/Writer imports, exports, and migrates repository and service metadata to or from an FME Server instance using FME Desktop applications like FME Workbench.
Connections are made to FME Servers to either export the metadata from the FME server using the reader, or import the metadata using the writer.
Overview
Inside Workbench, the FME Server Repository reader represents the contents of a repository on an FME Server in the form of feature types and features in a translation. A single feature type is created per repository on the source FME Server and an additional feature type, FMEServerServices, is created to represent the services. For each repository, features are produced from the source repository feature types for each individual item in a repository such as workspaces, custom transformers, or custom formats. A source FME Server Services feature type will produce one feature per FME Server service.
Similarly the FME Server Repository writer creates repositories and services on an FME Server based on input metadata features. If a destination feature type named FMEServerServices is present then it will accept features that contain service metadata in the expected format. All other destination feature types will be treated as individual repositories which will accept individual feature representing items in the repository, including workspace, customer transformers, and customer formats.
FME Server Repository format is a non-spatial format that produces and consumes feature with attributes and null geometries, thus it is unlikely that this reader or writer would be used for a true translation of GIS, or CAD data. Instead, it is most useful in managing the repositories and services of an FME Server instance. When the reader and writer are used together they can be used for migration of repositories from one server to another, or the reader alone can be used for backup purposes.
This chapter assumes familiarity with FME Server, the repositories, services, and connection parameters.
Reader Overview
FME considers an FME Server Repository dataset to be an instance of an FME Server containing a collection of repositories and services which are represented as FME feature types with each repository item or services corresponding to one FME feature.
The features produced from the FMEServerServices each represent a service on the FME Server and contain attributes for the service name and description, the list of workspaces associated with the service as well as other properties which may pertain to the type of service being represented.
The features produced from the other feature types, which represent repositories on the FME Server, each represent items in the repository, including workspaces, customer formats or custom transformers. Each repository item feature produced contains a name, description, path, and set of properties for that item. A workspace feature contains attributes for the properties inherited from any services that the workspace is registered with on the server. For example, a workspace associated with the WFS service would have properties for data extents and a coordinate system.
The basic reading process involves opening a connection to the FME Server and querying the services and repositories. The data is read by requests to the server and parsing the returned results and formatting them into features.
Writer Overview
The FME Server Repository writer module stores both services and repositories into an FME Server instance. The writer provides the following capabilities:
- Writing repositories: This includes writing various repository items such as workspaces, custom formats, custom transformers and other workspace resources.
- Writing services: This includes writing service properties and attributes as required.
- Writer parameters: These options define the action (append, merge, or drop) that will be taken when a service, repository, item or resource already exists.