Upgrade to next version of Knime Analytics Platform and server

Hello,
We use Knime AP a lot and are very happy about the regular releases, especially 4.3 that has brought very useful features. We also use Knime Server to automate the execution of workflows but are a bit disappointed by our IT department who doesn’t want to upgrade the server as a lot of workflows are running there and, according to their experience, moving to a new version requires a lot of testing and patching on all those running production workflows.

It seems not coherent with my experience with Analytics Platform where I can still run workflows developed with version 3.x in 4.3, even if it’s true that upgrading to 4.3, I had to reconfigure all my db connectors using variables to feed credentials to JDBC parameters (but that’s all).

My first question is for the Community.
Do you think this conservatism is justified? What is your overall experience upgrading Knime AP/Server as soon as new production version is released? Do you experience many breaking changes? Do you need that kind of extensive and expensive testing?

My IT department is finally accepting to plan an upgrade but will not do a new one within 6-8 months.

My next question to Knimers is whether there will be lots of great features in the next release (and we should wait for that one) or whether we can go on with 4.3. When will it be released? Maybe a release roadmap on the website could be helpful. The change log of the non-prod release is interesting but a structured summary may be more clear.

Thanks in advance!

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Hi @szawadski

as another source you can see here an overview of the KNIME 4.3. release: What's New in KNIME Analytics Platform 4.3 and KNIME Server 4.12 | KNIME

The production release of 4.3. went online on friday. And if I would recommend you to update now or with 4.4. highly depends on what you need. The key release point in 4.3. are imho the new FileHandling and the Python improvements. If you are happy with both, you could also wait for the 4.4. release line. There you can expect a production ready in late summer.

Cheers, Iris

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