My translation log reports a lot of FME processing time is spent writing to temporary FFS files. How can I avoid this

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Q) My translation log reports a lot of FME processing time is spent writing to temporary FFS files. How can I avoid this?

A) The issue here isn’t one of processing time, but more how that time is reported in the log file.

FME doesn’t log the time taken by each function – often it just reports 0.0 regardless.

This may be because the time is less than 0.1 seconds (the precision allowed for), or because the individual function cannot be accurately measured.

So the time used accumulates without being reported.

Hence, when the ‘Storing features…’ process logs the time taken, it reports all accumulated time so far, giving the mistaken impression that much of the FME process is accounted for by writing FFS files.

For example…

       2004-08-12 10:25:01|   1.1|  0.1|INFORM|Opened DBF File <xxxx> for output
       2004-08-12 10:25:01|   1.2|  0.0|INFORM|Opened Shape File <xxxx> for output
       2004-08-12 10:25:01|   1.2|  0.0|INFORM|Opened DBF File <xxxx> for output
       2004-08-12 10:25:01|   1.5|  0.3|STATS |Storing features to FME feature store file

…doesn’t mean that 0.3 seconds were spent writing to FFS, just that 0.3 seconds have been used since the last occasion this figure was reported.