NEWS

FME 2007 Release to Include Support for GeoRSS

Safe Software (Canada) has introduced GeoRSS support in FME 2007. RSS (Really Simple Syndication) has become a common way to publish and share information. By adding location to RSS, the emergence of GeoRSS is providing a way to integrate and share spatial and non-spatial data, and Safe Software’s FME 2007 will enable reading and writing GeoRSS/RSS feeds.

"Safe Software’s support of GeoRSS allows FME users to take advantage of one of the web’s newest methods of disseminating spatial information – RSS or feeds that include location information," said Don Murray, Safe Software’s co-founder and president. "GeoRSS is simply RSS with location information and is a great way to quickly and simply distribute small amounts of spatial information to a wide audience."

FME’s GeoRSS reader and writer support both RSS and Atom feeds, and all of the three current GeoRSS standards for encoding geographical data in a feed: Consortium (W3C) Geo, GeoRSS Simple and GeoRSS GML Profile.

Using FME’s GeoRSS reader, regularly updated information provided by any geo-tagged feed becomes just another data source to FME, enabling users to work with the data quickly and easily. The feed could be loaded into a database or overlaid and displayed on a custom base map, either in FME’s Universal Viewer, or in an FME-supported mapping application.

FME’s GeoRSS writer allows users to publish their own GeoRSS feeds to their own websites. For example, a municipality could use the GeoRSS writer to easily make available GeoRSS feeds of timely events such as fire calls, new building or subdivision permits, and new business licenses.

Although this is newly evolved technology, examples of GeoRSS feeds that are already publicly available include recent earthquake occurrences, regional traffic congestion reports and upcoming events hosted in recreational and cultural facilities. A number of free and very easy to use tools are also emerging that allow the information contained in GeoRSS feeds to be visualized in a mashup and shared with others. Example mashups showing FME training course locations from a GeoRSS feed created with FME are available at tinyurl.com/yqcxsd and tinyurl.com/ys3e4m.

The GeoRSS reader and writer is available in the FME 2007 beta (www.safe.com/beta).

Source: Safe Software

https://www.gim-international.com/content/news/fme-2007-release-to-include-support-for-georss