Table Reader (alias)

Is there a way to make an alias of a Table Reader?

In a workflow I want to put the same table in multiple places to make it clearer in one screenshot, but I don’t want to load the same table multiple times (70 million records)

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Hi @jmgor , unfortunately I don’t think this exists. I think it’s been brought up in a few discussions already.

One way to help with your issue is to make the links a bit clearer by moving/stretching them around like this:

You can actually drag these lines.

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Hi @jmgor

Your request is very similar to these others

As far as I’m aware there is not yet an implementation of it but definitely, it would be really nice to be able to use an “Alias” node which at the same component (or workflow) imbrication level it allows to connect very distant nodes without having to populate the workflow with connections going between long distances, or without having to save and/or read the tables again at the distant places.

Sometimes my workflows look like the photo below (me on the photo working on the workflow :rofl:)

I would be grateful to have a kind of KNIME “5G” or “WIFI” (node alias) for some of my long connections too lol :sweat_smile:

Thanks @jmgor for bringing back this suggestion for improvement to the KNIME forum :wink: :+1: !

Best

Ael

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Nice picture @aworker !!

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Thank you @aworker for your support and understanding.
That’s how I am, sometimes the tangle of connections does not reveal anything :rofl:
I hope that in the future we will see this improvement in a new node.
Greetings from Almería (Spain)

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I was curious about this as well and we do not currently have anything such as an alias node or a clone node. In general though, if your workflow is becoming a tangle of connections, you may want to use more advanced features of KNIME such as components (VIDEO) or call workflow nodes (HUB). For screenshots, I usually just copy and paste a node collection into a separate workflow and take images. Afterwards, I delete the unneeded workflow.

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Hi @victor_palacios

Thanks for your hints. Indeed variables, components and workflow nodes help to sort out things in a workflow and make it tidy.

However, even if they are wisely and extensively used, sometimes one reaches their limit. Therefore having the possibility of calling the output of a table by an -alias- node or at least, being able to hide some selected connections would be really very useful. I do not believe this should be so difficult to implement in KNIME.

Thanks & regards

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Thanks for the feedback, I have created an internal ticket suggesting this to our engineering team.

In the mean time, if there are more people who would like this feature please post a +1 or post a picture of a workflow where this is needed and components/call workflow etc. are not a great solution. I’ve linked the internal ticket to this forum page so the more posts this page has, the better.

Thank you!

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Great @victor_palacios, very much appreciated!

Here goes my +1 :wink:

Thanks & regards

Hi @victor_palacios , just to be clear though, it’s really an alias that would be helpful as opposed to cloning.

Cloning would make a copy of the table, which means using twice the resources that the table takes.

An alias would be more of a pointer, like a shortcut in Windows or a soft symlink in Linux. It just points to another file instead of replicating the file.

I created a Dummy Node as a component a few months ago, which basically is a pass-through. I’m guessing that this still replicates the output of the previous node (as in it makes a copy and uses as much resources as the previous node)?

EDIT: (Side Note: If aliasing (pointer) is not possible and only cloning is possible (as in it makes a copy of it), then might as well use my Dummy node :smiley: )

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