Licensing options for this format begin with FME Professional Edition.
The OpenStreetMap (OSM) is a collaborative mapping project for creating a free and editable map of the whole world.
This section assumes familiarity with the OSM format. Further information on OSM can be found at http://www.openstreetmap.org.
Overview
OpenStreetMap data can be downloaded in a topologically structured XML format. The data primitives in an OSM data file are nodes, ways, and relations.
- A node is a lat/lon pair.
- A way is a list of at least two node references describing a linear feature. Ways can be closed, in which case the first and the last node are identical. Areas are not explicitly represented in OSM but are identified via community-approved tags.
- Relations are a group of zero or more primitives with an associated role. All data in OSM are in the WGS-84 datum.
OSM has no explicit schema (feature type) definitions. Each node, way, and relation can have an arbitrary number of attributes, called tags in OSM. A tag is composed of a key and a value. The OpenStreetMap wiki does define a set of recommend tags that can be used to classify the nodes and ways into higher-level groupings, i.e., feature types.
The FME OSM reader provides some user settings to help influence the classification of the OSM data being read. This is needed for most GIS formats that have explicit schema definitions. The community-defined feature types can be found at http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/Map_Feature.