This section contains information applicable to accessing native ArcSDE with the SDE30 Reader and Writer. It does not apply to FME's Geodatabase Readers and Writers, which access SDE via ArcObjects and have always required that an appropriately-licensed version of ArcGIS software be installed.
Does FME work with ArcSDE 9.3 or higher?
In order to avoid problems of version incompatibility, as of FME version 2009, FME no longer installs the required libraries for reading and writing ArcSDE.
You should instead obtain these libraries from an Esri product to ensure compatibility between FME and your SDE database.
There are three methods for obtaining the required libraries:
- Install the ArcGIS Desktop product that matches, or is newer than, your ArcSDE installation, OR
- Install the SDE C SDK (available on your ArcGIS Server installation DVD) and set up the environment variable described below, OR
- Install ArcEngine and check for the environment variable described below
For options 2 or 3 you will need to set up a system environment variable as follows:
Variable Name - ARCGISHOME
Value - <ArcGIS Folder>\arcsde\
(that is, pointing to the folder that contains the bin folder with the SDE .dll files).
Note: The ArcGIS 10.2 series of releases was the last to be released with SDE C API. As such, option 2 is not available for ArcGIS 10.3 and later.
More Information
Visit this FME Knowledge Center page for more detailed information on FME and Esri version compatibility.