Global database connections

Folks,

I'm new to Knime but do have experience with other workflow tools (dare I say it, Pipeline Pilot Shhhh!).

I'm generally very happy with the Knime offerings but I have one serious niggle: lack of globally defined database connections.  I've been using some of the database nodes and as I understand things, the only way to set the connection is as follows:

  • Use the per-workflow defined credentials, which require user and password initially and password re-entry on subsequent Knime client start-up/execution.
  • Define the user and password in the database node configuration.  Apparently, this is less secure, since it stores the password in plain text on the hard disk (surely easily fixed?)

A third (and preferred) option would be to define a database connection globally and use that in a similar way to the workflow credentials.  A useful extension to this would be server-side pooled connections when working on the Knime server.

Does anyone know of any plans to implement the above?

 

Cheers,

Jim

Ok, solution appears to create a shared metanode and store that on the Knime server or a Team Space share.  I implemented this as a flow of four Java Edit Variable nodes, one for each: url, driver, user and password.