Software

KNIME version 2.0.0 was just released. KNIME, pronounced [naim], is a free modular data exploration platform that enables the user to visually create data flows (often referred to as pipelines), selectively execute some or all analysis steps, and later investigate the results through interactive views on data and models. KNIME features additional plugins which allow to use machine learning and statistical data analysis algorithms from other open source projects such as Weka and R. KNIME runs on Windows and Linux (32/64bit) and the SDK version comes with a wizard which simplifies creation of own extensions. Note that the KNIME team offers a training workshop in San Francisco in early February 2009 (see www.knime.org/about/events for details).

The new version is available for download at http://www.knime.org/download. This is a major release with a number of significant improvements, among others:

• more than 20 new nodes (not counting 70 new nodes in the WEKA extension)
• a newly defined database API for performing operations on databases
• improved meta node handling
• optimized workflow management
• many improvements on the user interface to ease workflow assembly and data inspection
• new support for workflow variables and workflow loops
• PMML support for some of the data mining nodes