In this chapter, we will go through the installation of KNIME, add some useful extensions, customize the settings, and find out how to use it for basic tasks. You will also be familiarized with the terminology of KNIME, so there's no misunderstanding in the later chapters.
As always, it is a good idea to read the manual of the software you get. You will find a short introduction on KNIME in the file, quickstart.pdf, present in the installation folder. The topics we will cover in the chapter are as follows:
- Installation of KNIME on different platforms
- Terms used in KNIME
- Introduction to the KNIME user interface
KNIME is an open source (GNU GPL available at http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html) data analytics platform with a large set of building blocks and third-party tools. You can use it from loading your data to a final report or to predict new values using a previously found model.
KNIME is available in four flavors: Desktop/Professional, Team Space, Server, and Cluster Execution. Only the Desktop version is open source; with a Professional subscription, you will get support for it, and also support the future development of KNIME. We will cover only the open source version. There is also an SDK version for free, but it is intended for use by node developers. Most probably, you will not need it yet.
At the time of writing this book, KNIME Desktop 2.8.0 was the latest version available; all the information presented in this book is based on that version.