Data Inspection Using FME Workbench

Besides Redirect to FME Data Inspector, Workbench can route data to the FME Data Inspector from individual transformers.

Using an Inspector Transformer

An Inspector is a Workbench transformer – with its own distinctive look and style – that causes data entering it to be directed to FME Data Inspector.

An Inspector transformer differs from the Redirect to FME Data Inspector setting because the transformer can be applied at any point in a translation (not just at the very end) and does not prevent the data being output to the writer. It also lets a user be more selective about which features should be inspected.

Here data is being directed to the Inspector after a CenterPointReplacer transformer, but before a KMLStyler.

As you can see, it's also a form of parallel streams, since the data is duplicated to both Inspector and KMLStyler.

Placing an Inspector Transformer

The best, and simplest way to apply an Inspector is to right-click the output port of an object in a workspace and select the Connect Inspector option.

Here the user right-clicks the Output port of an AttributeManager and chooses the option Connect Inspector:

Notice that an Inspector is named automatically using the transformer and output port names. Here it will be "AttributeManager_Output". This helps to identify the data from this Inspector (as opposed to any others) in the FME Data Inspector.

Note that the Inspector transformer only opens the FME Data Inspector when there are features to view. If there are zero features, then the Data Inspector will not open!

Mr. E. Dict, (Attorney of FME Law) says...

Pursuant to clause d30 (section 43) in your training course agreement, you are required to re-open the workspace from the previous example and add Inspector transformers to practice using this functionality.