Viewing and Inspecting Geodatabases

Introduction

Let’s start by looking at how FME handles data in an Esri geodatabase, using the attached geodatabase, communitymapgdb.zip (see the Files section to download).

Let’s try opening feature classes in the Community Map geodatabase using the FME Data Inspector. It’s always good practice to inspect the source data before translating it in FME Workbench.

Video

This video was recorded using FME 2016.0; the interface may be different, but the concepts are the same.

Step-by-Step Instructions

1. Add a Reader in FME Data Inspector

Start the FME Data Inspector and choose "Open a Dataset" from the File menu.

For format, select either Esri Geodatabase (File Geodb Open API) or, if you have a licensed version of ArcGIS® Desktop installed, Esri Geodatabase (File Geodb).

For the dataset, navigate to and select the zipped Community Map geodatabase. You don't need to unzip the dataset, as readers can handle a variety of archive and compressed files. To select zipped files, simply change the file type filter in the file browser dialog.

Select the format and the dataset location in the Add Reader dialog. Readers can handle compressed and archived files.

To select specific tables to read, click on the Parameters button. Under “Table List”, select one or more feature classes, such as FoodVendors or GarbageSchedule.

Notice that there are also many other parameters we can use to determine how FME reads a geodatabase, including a WHERE clause and whether to read network and relationship information.

Click OK to close the parameters dialog window. Click OK again to start reading the data.

In 2026.1, FME added support for Mac ARM in the File Geodatabase Open API. However, if you are using Mac ARM with an older version of FME, a potential workaround would be to run macOS Intel FME under Rosetta2.

2. Inspect Features in FME Data Inspector 

Once the dataset has opened in the FME Data Inspector, select one of the visualized features and look at the Feature Information window. Notice how FME represents the data and stores vital information about its features. This includes the coordinate system, attributes, geometry type, and a full list of coordinates for each feature. The Table View window displays the entire set of features as a spreadsheet-like table.

By default, the Feature Information pane is on the right-hand side of the Data Inspector window while the Table View is at the bottom. Map tiles by Stamen Design, under CC-BY-3.0. Data by OpenStreetMap, under CC-BY-SA.

Data Attribution

The data used here originates from open data made available by the City of Vancouver, British Columbia. It contains information licensed under the Open Government License - Vancouver.