This release includes significant updates to Safe Software's core technology, the Feature Manipulation Engine (FME), and delivers valuable workflow improvements to Safe Software's worldwide network of customers in the geographic information systems and business intelligence industries.

FME 2006 further refines FME's Workbench authoring environment and continues Safe's initiative to deliver the complete Spatial ETL solution encompassing both raster and vector support. FME 2006 incorporates over 1000 evolutionary product enhancements requested by FME users. On the raster front, six new raster preview formats have been added and many others have been updated, including enhanced support for Oracle® GeoRaster which allows raster data to be loaded into an Oracle Database10gR2.

Newly-added support for the Google Earth™ KML format enables FME 2006 users to publish spatial data residing in any of over 150 different formats and visualize this information in Google Earth. Also supported for the first time in FME 2006 is GML 3.1.1. This format was approved last May by the Open Geospatial Consortium as the standard XML-based group of formats for representing geographic features.

In addition to tutorials and traditional Help files included with this product release, Safe Software also recently created a new resource for www.fmepedia.com.

"FME 2006 takes our authoring environment to new heights. With this release we have made it easy for users to visually design and share their own data transformations," said Dale Lutz, Safe Software's Vice President of Product Development. "This, coupled with fmepedia, will allow FME users to share and collaborate in ways that were previously impossible."

For more information about the many new features included with FME 2006, visit www.safe.com/2006.

More About FME
FME is an integrated collection of Spatial ETL (Extract, Transform, and Load) tools for the distribution of location-based data. FME enables data sharing between applications or data stores with different structures. FME also allows spatial data to be manipulated in hundreds of different ways, unlocking the full information potential within a data set. FME consists of four major components: a translation engine (FME Universal Translator), a graphical authoring environment (FME Workbench), a data inspection tool (FME Viewer), and application extenders that directly integrate into a variety of spatial applications.
Visit www.safe.com for more information.

More about Safe Software
Safe Software Inc. is the industry leader in Spatial ETL (Extract, Transform, and Load) technologies, providing both spatial data transformation solutions and professional services. Since 1993, Safe Software has focused on helping organizations enhance access to spatial data by providing software solutions that deliver seamless data format translation. For more information, visit www.safe.com.

FME (Feature Manipulation Engine) is a registered trademark of Safe Software Inc. All other product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.