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FME Platform Best Practices

Liz Sanderson
Liz Sanderson
  • Updated

Introduction

The FME Platform is robust. We’ve put together a curated list of our best resources on best practices to help you get the most out of FME. For additional best practices, post a question on the FME Community or reach out to one of our Partners. 

FME Form

Documentation

Configuration

When choosing an FME version, we recommend using the newest version that works with your other systems. For example, if you are using FME Flow 2024.2, it is best practice to use the same version of FME Form (2024.2). Or, if the colleague you share workspaces with is on FME 2024.1, and since FME typically is not forward-compatible, you should also work in FME 2024.1. See FME Versions and Workspace Compatibility for more information. 

Additional Resources 

Personalize

You can personalize FME Form to suit your needs, such as changing the canvas color palette (light/dark mode) and customizing bookmarks and connection lines. You can find all these options in FME Options, and the different windows in Tools > Windows. 

New to FME 2025.1 are AI-translated language packs for FME Form and Flow to work with FME in a limited number of supported languages other than English.

Web Services & Connections

FME Options is also where you can add and manage web services, web connections, and database connections.

When creating a Web or Database Connection, give the connection a meaningful name, such as Production Oracle Autonomous or <Your Name> Google Sheets. It is also best practice to obtain your own Client ID and Secret, as the default ones could go offline without notice due to client service changes; see Web Connections and FME for more information.

Additional Resources

Authoring

When authoring a workspace in FME, consider future maintenance and performance. 

Maintenance
Maintenance is the ability to update the workspace and scale it up to a larger solution. Adding bookmarks and annotations throughout the workspace helps describe what is happening at any given point. It also helps future you remember what is going on and helps future authors understand various decisions.

In addition to documenting the workspace, it's best practice to lay it out in a logical order without crossing connection lines (if possible). To avoid crossing connection lines, you can move the objects around. If moving the component doesn’t uncross a line, a tunnel can be created, which is a hidden connection line indicated by two junctions, or you can move a port up or down by right-clicking on a port and selecting Move Up/Down. 

Performance
Performance is how efficiently the workspace runs using the fewest resources. The easiest way to improve performance is to limit the data moving through the workspace to only what you need. You can do this by using a WHERE Clause directly on the reader, filtering data with a Tester/TestFilter, or adding only the feature types you need (e.g., a single worksheet from Excel instead of the entire workbook). See Performance Tuning FME for more information. 

Other Authoring Tips
Use Feature Caching (Data Caching in 2025.1+) for debugging and authoring, but turn it off when working with rasters or the workspace is in production. See Feature Caching and Performance for more information.

When upgrading transformers or readers/writers, save a backup before upgrading. Then, upgrade slowly and test the workspace after each upgrade to ensure that nothing has broken.

Additional Resources

Debugging

When a workspace doesn’t work or doesn’t work as expected, debugging is a crucial step. For more information, see the Debugging Guide for Workspaces. 

Rejected Features may be one reason a workspace stops running. Reviewing the rejected features before proceeding may give you a clue about the issue. If you would like to skip over the rejected features, you can either add a Logger to the <Rejected> output port or change Workspace: Rejected Feature Handling to Continue by right-clicking on the <Rejected> port and selecting the Continue option.

Additional Resources

Versioning & Collaboration

When performing large updates on a workspace, save different versions so you can roll back if something breaks.

Workspace Compare and Merge lets users view differences between two workspaces.

Custom transformers are a great way to share reusable parts of a workflow when collaborating with other users. Also, document the workspace with annotations and update the Workspace Parameters, such as the History, Name, and Description.

Additional Resources

FME Flow

Documentation

Installing FME Flow

When installing FME Flow, consider different deployment architectures. Review A Guide to Choosing your FME Flow Deployment Architecture.

After installing FME Flow, the FME Flow Administrator should review all available parameters and options to ensure FME Flow meets the organization’s requirements and needs. See FME Flow Best Practices Guide for IT Ops and Flow Admins for information on which options can be changed.

Additional Resources

FME Flow Metrics

Job statistics in FME Flow include information on Job processing time, CPU usage, and memory usage to help you understand FME Flow activity and how jobs are performing. See the Analyzing Job Statistics in FME Flow blog post for more information. 

FME Flow Dashboards and Analytics are also useful tools for understanding how FME Flow is performing. 

Queue Control

Queue Control is a mechanism for targeting FME Engines to run specific jobs. Using this tool, you can control job priority, reserve engines for specific tasks, or run a job on an engine that is closer to the data source. For more examples, see the Guide to Manage Esri Jobs using Queue Control blog post. 

Managing Resources

When managing resources on FME Flow, such as web connections, data, and workspaces, it is a good idea to consider:

  • Who will access these resources?
  • How will they be accessed?
  • Where are they stored?

Best practice when uploading resources is to share them with as few people as possible; you can do this with user permissions. For more information, see the Role-Based and User-Based Access Control documentation.

Another option for limited sharing is to create an FME Flow App. For more information, see Getting Started with FME Flow Apps.

For optimal performance, keep the data as close to FME Flow as possible. You can do this by installing engines closer to the data. See A Guide to Choosing Your FME Flow Deployment Architecture. 

Security

FME Flow Security covers authentication methods, authorization, encryption, and securing the FME Flow web application. 

FME Flow Hosted

Documentation

​​​​​Additional Resources

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