Here are two simple quality-of-life suggestions for new features in node behaviour:
I’d sometimes like to be able to activate or deactivate a node in my pipeline for testing. Sure I can just redraw the data connections to bypass the node, but it would be nice to have a simpler option, such as a switch in the context menu.
Sometimes I branch off a lot of data connections from a single node during exploratory analysis. It would be nice to have some sort of feature to bundle data connections together to keep things a bit more organized. See the attached screenshot: I’m using the Column Filter nodes circled in red as “entry nodes” to different groups of visualizations so that all data connections are a bit more tidy and I don’t have connections going everywhere.
I like these suggestions. I also often use Column Filters for this exact same purpose, as they execute nearly instantaneously, and do not a create a new table copy internally (in contrast with many other nodes like a row filter, I think). I label them “Pass” to remind myself that these nodes have no function. Maybe a dedicated “Do nothing node” would be more elegant.
@poitryu would it bee an option to use a switch where the top branch would just go thru without doing anything while the bottom one might be connected to a meta node or component ? So depending on a Java variable either the branch gets executed or will just be passed by.
Never mind the example deals with Python nodes it would work with other nodes as well.
The ability to temporarily disable a node is something I’d certainly find very useful. Coming from having used alteryx and talend which both provide this, not having this in knime is one thing I find lacking. I guess if you’ve never needed it you won’t miss it, but I find that disabling/enabling individual nodes makes testing easier and far safer than having to reroute connections to bypass the node.
