Safe Software

Safe Software Inc. provides software and consulting services focused on managing the exchange of both spatial (geographic) and non-spatial data between GIS applications and/or relational databases with differing file formats and structures.

The company’s core data translation and transformation product is FME (or the Feature Manipulation Engine). Often described as an ETL tool for spatial data, or a Spatial ETL tool, FME provides functionality similar to a traditional ETL tool, but also has additional capability to manage spatial data and the complexity contributed by spatial data's associated feature geometries, attribute tables, and coordinate systems.

FME converts data between over 200 GIS, AutoCAD, raster, and database formats, and also manages two-way data migration between AutoCAD and GIS systems; database loading with vector, raster or non-spatial data; data extraction from legacy systems; integration of data from multiple sources; quality assurance; and coordinate system conversion. SpatialDirect, another Safe Software product based on FME, enables spatial data to be downloaded from a website in multiple formats, and also acts as an Open Geospatial Consortium standards-compliant Web Feature Service (WFS).

FME Server (released in 2008) further enhances a user's ability to distribute and deliver data in variety of formats by way of a variety of services such as WFS, WMS, SOAP, KML as well as basic streaming.

Company history
Established in 1993, Safe Software initially provided data translation tools to convert the Spatial Archive and Interchange Format (SAIF) used by the provincial government of British Columbia, Canada, into other GIS formats. Today the company’s technology is sold in 116 countries and is embedded in mapping applications sold by several leading GIS vendors.

Location
Safe Software’s offices are located in Surrey, in the metro Vancouver area of British Columbia, Canada.

More information
Additional information is available on Safe Software's website and on the company's corporate blog. The company also maintains a wiki that provides support for users of its products at www.fmepedia.com.