Tracing back Flow Variables

Feedback & Ideas
1

Hi,

while wortking toward my Knime Traininer Certification it incurred to me that there is no elegant solution to identify possible root causes triggered by flow variables. Only the point of failure is clear.

But when a flow variable gets accidentally deleted (worst case) or a component is created, required additional configuration, or more simply a flow variable type or value get altered unintentionally, it is difficult to trace that back.

I’d like to porpose a feature to listen to variables which will result in console output of all nodes creating, modifying or leveraging said varaible. Furthermore, a feature to traverse the workflow or jump to each related node / component for quick inspection would drastically speed up debugging.

Best
Mike

2

Just wanted to propose a similar feature request:

Provide “Where-used list” functionality for flow variables, not matter where they are shown (workflow itself or in any node).
Knowing where a variable is used helps to: adapt vars to new demands, decide if a new var is needed, or if a var is an orphan that can be deleted.