How do interact with FME in Smallworld?

I was asked a question yesterday at the conference about how I interact with FME from Smallworld and thought I would start an informal survey of readers to see what your responses are.

The question is: How do you interact with FME from Smallworld?

1) Do you see FME as an application that is launched from a Smallworld session?

2) Or do you prefer to use FME more as a standalone tool that connects to a Smallworld server process?

My own preference is to see FME as a standalone tool that makes a connection to a Smallworld server. That way any business analyst that does not have a Smallworld session running could still make a connection to a central Smallworld server port and run the workspace. Having this configuration would also facilitate use of FME Server with Smallworld. This method of interaction would be great for reading from Smallworld. But I suppose that writing to a Smallworld database might make one lean towards option#2.

With option #2, you as a Smallworld user could control which alternative the data was being written to and then you could do a final check of the data in your alternative before you committed it.

So I suppose that my preferred mode of operation includes both above-mentioned options. A "FME connects to Smallworld server" option for reading data and for selected controlled write operations. And a "Smallworld launches FME" option for the more ad hoc write operations.

I'm curious what your thoughts are.