Vancouver, B.C. – March 13, 2003 - Safe Software Inc., the industry leader in the creation, support, and development of advanced spatial ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) technologies, announces it has released an enhanced version of its Feature Manipulation Engine (FME) Geographic Data Files (GDF) reader to support TeleAtlas MultiNet 3.2 GDF (ASCII) sequential datasets.

“Safe Software has worked closely with the TeleAtlas product team in Gent, Belgium, to ensure compatibility between the FME GDF reader and the latest TeleAtlas MultiNet 3.2 product offering,” said Mark Stoakes of Safe Software’s Professional Services Division. “The release for this enhanced FME GDF reader coincides with the delivery of GDF data to TeleAtlas North American clients.”

Currently, FME supports the reading and writing of many GDF variants, including GDF 3.0, TeleAtlas, and NavTech. In addition, FME includes a viewer that allows users to view and query GDF files.

Safe Software’s Professional Services Division has considerable experience working with GDF and has helped a number of organizations get their data in and out of GDF. One such organization is Geo Strategies Ltd in the United Kingdom, who reported “We’ve successfully used the FME GDF translator to convert over 8.7 million road objects and 350 000 points of interest stored in GDF to MapInfo format. The resulting dataset had a file size of over 2 gigabytes and our internal consistency checking software found it to be free of errors. Many thanks and well done!”

Attendees of the upcoming 2003 GeoTec Event can learn more about Safe Software’s GDF support during the Utilities (Transportation and Logistics) track. A paper on Digital Road Maps and the GDF Standard Putting Theory into Practice will be presented.

More about GDF
Geographic Data Files is a sophisticated standard used to describe and transfer road networks and road-related data. It is more than a generic GIS standard, because GDF gives rules for capturing the data, and for defining the features, attributes and relations. GDF is primarily used in car navigation systems.

More about FME
FME is a Spatial ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) tool that makes it easy for organizations to translate, transform, share and enhance their data between over 100 GIS, CAD, and database formats, including GDF variants such as GDF 3.0, TeleAtlas, and NavTech. FME consists of three main components: a translator, a transformation editor, and a viewer. FME Objects is an embeddable version of FME that provides a set of software components for working with spatial data. For a free evaluation, visit www.safe.com.

More about Safe Software
Safe Software Inc. is the industry leader in Spatial ETL technologies. Safe Software provides both spatial data transformation solutions and professional services. For more information, visit www.safe.com.

FME is a registered trademark of Safe Software Inc.

For more information:
Karen Liu
Marketing Communications Coordinator
Safe Software Inc.
Suite 2017 -- 7445 132nd street
Surrey, B.C., Canada
Tel: 604-501-9985, local 224
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