Re-execution feature for all KNIME Widgets that provide input for Webservices (DataApps)

Hi everbody,

we realised that in KNIME 4.5 only a few Widget nodes offer the new re-execution functionality for webservices (DataApps). There is no re-execution feature implemented for many nodes we widely use in webservices, like:
wigets

Unfortunately, this leads for us to a feature we were hoping for since many years and now we can barely use it, since the user does not understand why some inputs trigger re-execution and others not. For us, thats not user friendly enough. By the way, the Refresh Button is not an option for us, since the user/customer is expecting what everywhere else (JS, Rshiny and Python based websites for example) is normal since a while.

As example I have found this overview of some of the features Rshiny offers Shiny - Widget Gallery

Our standard use case for 1 page webservices is 1. variety of settings → 2. calculating mathematical model in R or Python based on these settings → beautiful customised plots showing the result. If any change is made anywhere in the settings the model and its plots are recalculated live and shown.

In order to be more flexible, it would be a great additional option in the re-execution tab to set the time how long a widget waits after an user input to trigger the re-execution…

I would like to ask the KNIME community if we are the only one with these expectations and if not to vote for them to tell KNIME its needed asap for others as well. I will have my fingers crossed for KNIME version 4.6.1

Many thanks in advance.
Lars

5 Likes

I think this deserves an official answer from us at well, however I wanted to give the community a chance to discuss this first. This is super valid feedback, and we are definitely working on adding the reexecution capability to more nodes.

Btw. thank you for adding the Shiny Link, i did not see how they make these decisions beforehand and it will be very helpul for us when designing the reexecution of the other Widgets.

2 Likes

Dear Iris,

thanks a lot for your feedback. Although it looks like we are the only KNIME user with that wish, we highly appreciate the efforts to implement the reexecution feature in all your Widget nodes.

Many thanks in advance!
Lars

1 Like

One more thing,

we tried using German Umlaute together with the re-execution feature and realized that during the first run in KNIME it works fine and after the re-execution weird letters are shown. Is that behavior general and known?

For example the label text of the Single Selection Widget:

‘Dies ist ein Text der hat ÜÄÖ’
is reformated during re-execution to
‘Dies ist ein Text der hat ÜÄÖ’

All the best,
Lars

Hi Lars,

does that issue only come up in KNIME Analytics Platform and not on the WebPortal? And are you using KNIME 4.5.1?
Then that may already be fixed in 4.5.2 (UIEXT-112 in the changelog).

Should 4.5.2 not fix the issue, could you share an example workflow to reproduce the error?

Kind regards
Marvin

Hi Marvin,

many thanks for the quick reply. I am glad to hear the error is fixed already, but we have just moved to 4.5.1. I just tested it in a small WF on the Server as well and it looks like the problem does not occur there under 4.14.1.

All the best,
Lars

1 Like

Hi @Iris @marvin.kickuth,

I am wondering if there is any update on this topic?

THX Lars

1 Like

Hi Lars,

currently we are focusing on a new set of visualization nodes that improve on the previous nodes in many ways.

For existing nodes, I believe there haven’t been many changes so far. But: yes, we are hard at work on improving the widget experience.

Kind regards
Marvin

Hi Marvin, thanks a lot for the answer. We were hoping for the re-execution feature to finally allow for one page Webservices for a long time and we were very glad when it was announced. Unfortunately, we still can not make really use of it since several important Widgets are missing. I had my fingers crossed that this was solved in the current version and we can make use of it after we update.

It is great that you work on improving the Plot Views but that doesn’t help or replace the feature we need to re-execute a workflow automatically, if changes in the input widgets were made by the user to re-run for example an R node.

We would highly appreciate if in the upcoming version of the widgets would all support the automatical re-execution.

Best,
Lars

1 Like

@laval have you thought about using the refresh button? I built a demonstration where you configure settings in a components web-view and then the refresh button triggers the re-drawing of a seaborn graphic which is offered as a download option.

Not sure if this would help your case?

Hi, many thanks for that hint. We were using the refresh button for tests and had to realise that the workflow developers don’t want that because its old fashioned. A one page application should work without that unless needed. The result is that they leave KNIME as option behind and do that easily for example in RShiny. I think that is a huge chance KNIME is missing out here. My hope was that this code part can be easily implemented in the nodes which doesn’t have the feature yet and when I started this thread I linked to RShiny and gave as many ideas I could think of to make it a really round feature.
Unfortunately, the community here seems not to really use that feature or at least doesn’t comment on it.

Best,
Lars

Dear all,

I am aligned with @laval… it would be great to have a re-execution possibility for all input widgets. This would allow -together with the nice new KNIME Views nodes in Labs- user-friendly and interactive components for every “normal” user / data consumer.

So +1 from my side … :slight_smile:

Hoping the best and best regards,

JĂźrgen

Hallo @Juergen,

Thanks for your feedback as well. I added you to the feature request ticket (internal reference: UIEXT-341).
In case there are more forum users in need of this feature, please let us know, so we can add you to the ticket and prioritise the feature in the future.

We always appreciate the user feedback.

Kind regards,
Janina

4 Likes

Please add a +1 for that ticket from me, too. It would make a big difference if that feature were available for all input widgets.

1 Like

Yes, this would be a useful feature. I also upvote +1

1 Like

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