Hi all!
This post is about the reference documentation in KNIME.
I use SPSS Modeler at work, and IBM made sure things you need are well documented and in one place. E.g. there's the Alrgorithm Guide, theres' CLEM Expression guide and and very neat search-database for in-browser usage.
Having this in mind, and using KNIME for some academical purposes, I needed to write this.
As much as I love the help window in each node, many of them are not so well describing the node's functions and the reference article it was based on. As much as some algorithms are well-known to the community, for a user being new in a specific field (e.g. text processing or bio-stats) it is hell of a network of references one needs to find (on the internet), open, then read.
My suggestion is for KNIME devs to prepare that knowledge well-ordered and in one place (PDF or downloadable HTML), so that when one needs to find explanation to something quickly, it is at a click-reach. I believe many will find it usefull in such form. When in need to find some answer, use-case and algorithm documentation will be far more useful, than waiting on the community members to respond to a forum request.
Some may say, there are already PDFs. Ok, but the path to them is not quite clear. There is node guide, which is addapted for stream (workflow) discovery. That is useful for some cases, for others rather not.
And I think it's a must ot have the RegEx expressions (commands) collected in one place, as there are differences between languages (and uses) and it would be useful to know what KNIME is able to execute - i.e. know the possibly useful to your case commands.
I'd love to see some reflections on this.
With the best regards for the developers and the community :)
Cheers,
Julian