Hello. I have been using Knime for my job for a couple of years to do data processing, pretty much entirely by myself. It’s been fine because I can have a private dropbox workspace where I keep my files and scripts, and I run the scripts on my local machine. Now we have a new employee who I need to share scripts with that both of us work on.
We use dropbox to synchonise our files at my company.
Two issues have emerged:
sharing Knime scripts. I’ve mostly been able to work this one out. I think if we have a shared folder in dropbox that acts as our workspace, we can access and modify the same scripts. But I’m worried the system is not designed to handle this and the files could break if we make too many changes at once.
file directories. Our file reader/write nodes use directories based on our usernames, e.g /Users/username/Company Dropbox/username/Company Projects/Project folder/Important files/. This is annoying because it means to run the scripts from scratch it requires us to replace the read/write directories which is a nuissance
End result: it would be nice to have a google docs style system where we can both access, edit and run the scripts seemlessly.
I saw that Knime server is an option. I’m interested if it is effective. However our company is cash strapped at the moment. So they may not be willing to spend the money. But it would be good to know what solutions are available, plus know how the community handles this.
@Mercurius I would advise against sharing KNIME workspaces via Cloud services if more than one person is working there at the same time. It might lead to conflicts and loss of data.
You can have something like a hand made backup system. I have written something about Cloud Drives and Backup here:
Mastering KNIME: Unlocking Peak Performance with Expert Tips and Smart Settings
“Backup is only for the faint of heart?”
“KNIME and Clouds — OneDrive and DropBox”
About local Backup:
You can extract properties and create Path variables depending on which user is using the workflow so you will not have to enter the ID individually. If the properties cannot be extracted automatically you might create a lookup table.
And well yes. Team cooperation is where the KNIME Business hub will shine (also adding automation and version control).
Hi,
I am happy to see that your KNIME user group is growing from 1 to 2 users! I just wanted to put out here that we also have a commercial offering on KNIME Community Hub that allows teams to share workflows with each other and also store multiple versions of a workflow. We are also working on adding execution functionality for schedules. This will come pretty soon. If you want to know more about Teams on Community Hub, have a look here.
Kind regards,
Alexander
Thanks mlauber. Good to know about the extract properties node. I figured there would be something like that, but wasn’t in the mood to search for it! I’ll try integrating that into my scripts. Should hopefully makes things a bit easier, and I’ll see if I can persuade my superiors to get Business Hub.
Hi Mercurius,
Right now the “trial plan” for Community Hub is the free personal plan, which has the same collaboration features as the teams plan, but only on public spaces.
Kind regards,
Alexander