A lot of times the feedback I and others give is (rightly) noting problems and issues, or is suggesting future features that we’d like to see.
But today I’m excited by a couple of things I just spotted in the upcoming KNIME AP 5.3 release. I know it is a little way away yet (July 2024, I believe)… but one specific thing is close to my heart, so close in fact that it caused me to download the nightly build (first time I’ve done that) to try it out.
I’ll mention a couple of other “goodies” in a moment, but firstlythe stand-out bug fix that has got me so excited is this one:
- AP-21669: The component output port gets activated in an inactive branch in case of missing flow variable
This has been the bane of my KNIME life for the past year or so, featuring in several forum posts, including recently:
Naturally, as soon as I saw this, I just had to give 5.3 Nightly a try, and I am pleased to report that the bug is resolved in that build. Woohoo! Thank you and well done KNIME team
Meanwhile, in other positive news… while I was there I had a play with a couple of other things.
Loving the new " Workflow monitor" panel containing details of nodes that are in error or giving warnings! That is going to be a game changer for me - especially with some of my spaghetti workflows! Being able to click on the message and have the workflow immediately scroll across to the node in error (or giving the warning) will make such a difference.
Hey that reminds me of something …
Wow - is it my birthday!
This to me will be a massive step forward in usability and efficiency on large workflows.
Mind you, I would still like to find a place where console messages produced by such nodes as Java Snippet could appear, as I use this for generating progress messages, e.g. logWarn("Hello world");
, but one thing at a time, and I think for many use cases the Workflow monitor will be far more friendly, especially to new users, than the classic “console log”.
Brilliant though it is, I don’t think as it stands it can completely replace Console Log… mostly… but not completely… just putting that out there!
I also noticed in the changelog, mention of a new “Expression” node. I see there is a KNIME Expressions (labs) extension in addition to the familiar “KNIME Expressions” extension.
I installed this and the (labs) Expression node looks to be pretty good. I may be wrong, but my take on it is that this is not a replacement to Column Expressions or Variable Expressions, but instead will be a modern alternative to both the String Manipulation and Math Formula nodes. It provides a modern UI for a single expression, but provides a more user friendly syntax, including conditional statements. It’s still in the labs but looks promising!
One thing I stumbled across (didn’t see it in the changelog) was a much-needed enhancement of the Modern UI.
Right-clicking on the tab for an open workflow now gives an option to “Reveal in space explorer”
Clicking this takes you to where the workflow is in Space Explorer.
This is the direct equivalent of the Classic UI button to select active workflow in the explorer:
This very small feature is another big thing that has been on my personal wish-list.
Now, as a bit of additional feedback, I would still like for the full name of the current workflow to be displayed when I hover over the workflow title bar, as it does when I hover over the name in Space Explorer:
Because currently when I have “My fantastic workflow that does something really amazing” and “My fantastic workflow that does something really amazing2” open side by side, there isn’t an easy well to tell which is which, without revealing in space explorer and then hovering there to find out.
There are plenty more things I could comment on, and yet more suggestions I can and will make in future, but I want to take this moment to say thanks to the KNIME team for listening and keeping the improvements coming. The move to Modern UI continues to be a journey (admittedly longer and tougher for some than for others!) but it’s great to see the direction of travel.
For me, KNIME 5.3 cannot come soon enough, and I strongly believe that KNIME 6 will be awesome!
Cautionary notes
I should be responsible here and add that of course what I was looking at was a nightly build of KNIME 5.3. Not being involved in the release process, I understand that there are no absolute guarantees that anything I’ve talked about here will be in the 5.3 final release product, and functionality is still subject to testing and alteration. Also, if you do decide to try out the 5.3 nightly build, best to use the zip archive (as I did) so it is side-by-side with your installation. You must accept the risks, and ideally use a non-critical machine!
The nightly build is not for production use, and you should note the warnings on the download page. Don’t overwrite any current KNIME installation with it, if it is an environment you currently rely on!