Future Enhancements

Over the course of development we have identified additional areas of opportunities for improvement with KDLC and kdlc, which were outside of the scope of the initial set of requirements.

1. Retain Node Descriptions

Within the KNIME GUI, nodes have a free text label underneath themselves, which can assist users with organization and management of their workflows. Retaining this description and exposing it within KDL can provide an improved user experience for individuals authoring and editing workflows with KDL.

2. Bundling Data in knwf Archives

KNIME offers the ability to introduce relative links to local workflow data within a user’s KNIME workspace with the knime:// denotation prefixed to the relative location. Subsequently, KNIME bundles this data within KNIME archives when exporting a workflow. When converting a knwf archive to KDL, the produced knwf archive does not contain this bundled data and a user will have to manually link to the path of the data. The KDL compiler currently alerts the user with a warning if such a path is detected within a node configuration when compiling KDL into a knwf archive.

3. Merging Workflows

KDL presents opportunities for improved automation and development of workflows. The ability to merge two workflows into a single workflow presents itself as a time saving feature, which could remove a previously tedious process.