Form Basics - Exercise 3

Exercise Details	Basic Data Inspection
Locality	Melbourne, Australia
Data	Bicycle Network (GeoJSON) Property Boundaries (Esri Shapefile)
Overall Goal	Inspect the output from a previous translation
Demonstrates	Basic data inspection with the FME Data Inspector
Start Workspace	None
End Workspace	None

In the previous exercise, you were asked to convert some data between formats. Before you send the converted data out, you should inspect it to make sure it is correct. Let's see how the FME Data Inspector interface works by inspecting the output from that quick translation.

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1

Start FME Data Inspector

Start the FME Data Inspector by selecting it from the Windows start menu. You'll find it under Start > FME Form 2024.x > FME Data Inspector 2024.x.

2

Open Dataset

The FME Data Inspector will start up and begin with an empty view display.

To open a dataset, select File > Open Dataset from the menu bar. When prompted, fill in the fields in the Select Dataset dialog as follows:

Parameter	Value
Reader Format	GeoJSON (Geographic JavaScript Object Notation)
Reader Dataset	C:\FMETraining\Output\WasteCollection.json

Note: If you can't find the dataset, maybe you didn't complete the first exercise, or wrote the data to a different location - then you can open the original zoning dataset as described in Exercise 2.

The GeoJSON dataset looks like this:

3

Browse Data

Use the windowing tools on the toolbar to browse through the dataset, inspecting it closely. Use the Select tool to select individual features and inspect the information in the Feature Information Window.

Try right-clicking in the different Data Inspector windows, to discover functionality that exists on context menus.

4

Add Dataset

Let's add a second dataset to the display to compare to our zoning data. This dataset will be a SHP file of neighbourhood boundaries. Then we'll be able to see which neighbourhood each zone overlaps.

To add a dataset, select File > Add Dataset from the menu bar. When prompted, fill in the fields in the Select Dataset dialog as follows:

Parameter	Value
Reader Format	Esri Shapefile
Reader Dataset	C:\FMETraining\Data\Australia\PropertyBoundaries\PropertyBoundaries.shp

The display now looks like this:

Use the Table View to practice inspecting the tabular data for each feature type. Click on the dropdown arrow at the top of Table View and switch back and forth between the WasteCollection.json and PropertyBoundaries.shp tables:

Without context, the layers in the View Window look confusing. However, we can improve the display by changing symbology and adding a background map. We'll learn how to do that in the next section.

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CONGRATULATIONS

By completing this exercise, you have learned how to:

• Open datasets in a new view in the FME Data Inspector

• Add datasets to an existing view in the FME Data Inspector

• Use the windowing and inspection tools in the FME Data Inspector