Table Reader: Deprecated setting not updated to new setting

[mwiegand]

Hi,

I once a while, but couldn’t exactly pin point the cause, face an issue where the Table Reader fails. I noticed the deprecated setting under “Advanced Settings > Table specification > When schema in file has changed > Ignore (deprecated)” being inaccessible.

Why isn’t that auto-updated to “Use new schema” which should result in the same behavior? If the Table Reader is placed fresh the default is “Fail” but the deprecated settings is still available, albeit being disabled.

Best
Mike

[hotzm]

We did not want to break existing workflows, because we cannot know if the workflow relies on that option being chosen or not. This is why old instances still have the value set (and use it), but the option is disabled.
If you find your workflow breaks with this option “randomly” (which is exactly why we deprecated it!), you need to change it manually to one of the other two.

[mwiegand]

Thanks for the explanation. That might be a good opportunity to suggest, which I thought I already did but could not find the post of mine, an assistant like Selenium Nodes has.

An assistant which assesses the workflow either automatically updating nodes or providing guidance (quick jump) and highlighting in a separate windows what has changes.

Do you happen to know if something similar was suggested already?

[hotzm]

I don’t know if it has been suggested yet, but internally we are thinking about ways to make it easier to migrate from deprecated nodes to their new counterparts. But since every node change is different and automatic changes might lead to subtle unwanted changes, we have not yet found a good solution.

[mwiegand]

Nice to hear this already is being thought about. What about the following step wise and linear approach:

1. Knime starts and checks for deprecated nodes
   Note: This can also be a separate workflow analyzer feature in a dedicated window that can be executed on demand instead upon each app start
2. Present a prompt asking for assisted workflow / node upgrade
3. Create a copy of the workflow if confirmed
4. List all upgradable nodes similar to the workflow monitor in MUI
5. Upon selecting a list item, jump to the node
6. Display a diff of changes, a short summary as the full node description is too much to compare as well as a CTA to start the guided update process
7. Upon triggering the update open the node config dialogue (with advanced settings already opened to not miss anything), auto apply compliant ones and highlight new ones as yellow since they have a default setting set and the remaining ones which should be wrong (i.e. missing or incompatible variable) in red

In case of the most recent worst case, the Row Filter, #6 would already highlight the filter section in red as the mapping would be only partially possible, creating an empty entry “Criterion 1”

The integration approach could be done by:

1. Building upon the Workflow Monitor and Node Comparison
   
   
   
   
   
2. First Stage: Creating a list with jump to feature and site by side comparison listing prev. settings to manually incorporate everything
3. Second Stage: Improving conveniency by auto-mapping variables and settings which are undoubtedly mappable
4. Third Stage: Fully automating the setting and eventually incorporating K-AI for additional aid

Worth to note that I believe the third stage might never be achievable since i.e. new data types are introduced or old removed expanding the scope way beyond the node level.