Introducing KNOT 2.0

After more than one year, KNOT got to version 2.0. The new release introduces a number of usability improvements in existing nodes, as well as a brand new node!

Usability Improvements

In its first release, KNOT nodes relied only on naming conventions for determining which columns to use as inputs. This practice proved to be error prone, and often forced users to rename columns, leading to needlessly more complex workflows and hindering productivity. Hence, in KNOT 2.0, we introduced columns pickers to select the desired inputs in the configuration dialog of each node!

Moreover, the Grid Coverage Analyzer now features a graphical selector that allows user to select the area on which they want to compute spatio-temporal coverage on by drawing a rectangle on a map! No more need to manually input coordinates!

A new node: Bounding Box Filter

Version 2.0 brought a new node in KNOT: the Bounding Box Filter. This node can filter data depending on whether geometry objects (encoded in WKT format) belong to a customizable bounding box, so that you can focus your analyses on the areas that actually matter! The bounding box can be selected by drawing a rectangle on an interactive map.

Updated documentation and release on the KNIME Hub

In KNOT 2.0, we also overhauled the entire KNOT documentation, including both the in-KNIME description of each node, and this website. Moreover, we are also preparing for the release of KNOT 2.0 on the official KNIME Hub, that will make the install and update process much easier.

Next steps

KNOT is still undergoing active development, with a number of new nodes being a work-in-progress. For example, among others, we are currently working on a node to extract vehicular trajectories from GTFS public transit specifications. So stay tuned!