KNIME Analytics Platform vs. LibreOffice

KNIME Analytics Platform is excellent for people who are finding Excel frustrating, this can be due to errors creeping in due to manual changes or simply that there are too many calculations which causes the system to slow down and crash. This is especially true for regular reporting where a KNIME Analytics Platform workflow can pull in the most recent data, process it and provide the necessary output in one click. I find KNIME Analytics Platform especially useful when talking with audiences who are intimidated by code. KNIME Analytics Platform allows us to discuss exactly how data is processed and an analysis takes place at an abstracted level where non-technical users are happy to think and communicate which is often essential when they are subject matter experts whom you need for guidance. For experienced programmers KNIME Analytics Platform is a double-edged sword. Often programmers wish to write their own code because they are more efficient working that way and are constrained by having to think and implement work in nodes. However, those constraints forcing development in a "KNIME way" are useful when working in teams and for maintenance compared to some programmers' idiosyncratic styles.

Incentivized

If you're working with numbers, LibreOffice doesn't get in your way and try to make changes as it sees fit, forcing you to repeatedly go back and undo processes you didn't want, didn't ask for, and that have no place in the document you are trying to produce. All I want to do is assemble the data, process it for the task at hand, and then print it for distribution. LibreOffice allows me to do that.

• Summarize instrument level financial data with relevant statistics
• Map transactions from core extracts to groups of like transactions using rule engines
• Machine learning using random forests and other techniques to analyze data and identify correlations for use in predictive models
• Fill out sampling data from averages.

• Tools like speeling, grammar, and thesaurus are super fast and intuitive
• Read-only content can be created by adding a section and password
• The right-click menus are very intuitive and change on the fly with what is needed depending on the content and situation
• Documents can be saved natively as *.docx or *.xlsx

Incentivized

• It does not have proper visualization.
• Some other BI tools (QlikView) have much easier functions for data interaction.
• Some other BI tools (Tableau) can be set up much faster.
• It is not an easy tool to use for non-tech savvy staff.

Incentivized

• It doesn't provide all the functions it should with a paid subscription.
• There are features that are only available with Premium and I have premium and they are still not available.
• Paying for the premium version doesn't provide additional services than free version
• Customer service is nonresponsive and has been nonresponsive for years even prior to COVID.

We are happy with Knime product and their support. Knime AP is versatile product and even can execute Python scripts if needed. It also supports R execution as well; however, it is not being used at our end

We use it consistently and have a lot of documents in the OpenDocument format so it will be necessary to use LibreOffice or a compatible product such as Openoffice in the future to be able to open these files. Because the license fee for Libreoffice is zero it is not very costly to keep using it - the costs are mostly for keeping it installed on the office PCs and regularly updated, and solving employee issues with the user support.

Incentivized

KNIME Analytics Platform offers a great tradeoff between intuitiveness and simplicity of the user interface and almost limitless flexibility. There are tools that are even easier to adopt by someone new to analytics, but none that would provide the scalability of KNIME when the user skills and application complexity grows

Incentivized

For all of the reasons in the foregoing evaluation. Its menus are clean, intuitive and straightforward. Any function I need to use can be accessed via keystrokes, without having to stop, move my hand to the mouse, deal with it, and then get back to the keyboard to proceed. It helps me keep my mind on my work and not worry about dealing with the mouse all the time.

Libreoffice is a desktop app not requiring any server part so it is always available when the PC is working normally. Installing it on another machine if one PC fails is very quick and easy. This is a non-issue.

Incentivized

For big/imported tables or text documents with images loaded from the internet it is sometimes getting very slow, RAM and CPU intensive, and sometimes even hangs due to some memory leaks or other bugs. This is a long-term problem and is still not resolved perfectly.

Incentivized

KNIME's HQ is in Europe, which makes it hard for US companies to get customer service in time and on time. Their customer service also takes on average 1 to 2 weeks to follow up with your request. KNIME's documentation is also helpful but it does not provide you all the answers you need some of the time.

Incentivized

Support is not officially offered. However, you can find answers to any usage questions or trouble-shooting online easily, typically starting with a Google search. (I believe that all forums / tips for OpenOffice apply equally to LibreOffice, and vice versa.) While Microsoft Office, for example, officially includes support, I find that typically you end up going to a Google search in any case. So, this is not really a downside. However, in all these cases, you end up doing a lot of figuring things out for yourself.

Incentivized

KNIME Analytics Platform is easy to install on any Windows, Mac or Linux machine. The KNIME Server product that is currently being replaced by the KNIME Business Hub comes as multiple layers of software and it took us some time to set up the system right for stability. This was made harder by KNIME staff's deeper expertise in setting up the Server in Linux rather than Windows environment. The KNIME Business Hub promises to have a simpler architecture, although currently there is no visibility of a Windows version of the product.

Incentivized

Generally easy to perform, issues are how to ensure regular automatic updates on Mac OS X. Fortunatly we have only a few machines with OS X run by management and we can do these updates manually occasionally. Windows updates are quite easy with the support of third party software such as Ninite or Chocolatey, and Linux updates are super-easy thanks to the package manager (apt-get).

Incentivized

Having used both the Alteryx and [KNIME Analytics] I can definitely feel the ease of using the software of Alteryx. The [KNIME Analytics] on the other hand isn't that great but is 90% of what Alteryx can do along with how much ease it can do. Having said that, the 90% functionality and UI at no cost would be enough for me to quit using Alteryx and move towards [KNIME Analytics].

Incentivized

I think it is fair to say this:

• If you are looking for a well-rounded, GNU-licensed product that will encompass word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, and database then LibreOffice is probably all you need.
• For online collaboration, links with cloud storage, and more robust support, Microsoft Office 365 and Google Docs are probably what you or your organization needs.
• LibreOffice is at its best for regular document creation and spreadsheet management. It is more cumbersome when it comes to fonts but also when it comes to linkages with cloud-based services. It is there, but you need some more computer knowledge to make it work.
• There are other free alternatives, most notably Apache Open Office, which is also a very good alternative if you do not like LibreOffice.

Having said that, I honestly think off-line computers or laptops used off-site can certainly benefit from having LibreOffice installed.

Incentivized

With more users using it in the company there are more cases when a simultaneous editing of the same document is needed and this feature is lacking in Libreoffice even though the files concerned are shared and synced by some solution (we use ownCloud). Google Docs or MS Office365 via Sharepoint/Onedrive offer a better function for this.

Incentivized

• It is suited for data mining or machine learning work but If we're looking for advanced stat methods such as mixed effects linear/logistics models, that needs to be run through an R node.
• Thinking of our peers with an advanced visualization techniques requirement, it is a lagging product.

Incentivized

• I am able to quickly create and edit word processing documents and spreadsheets which are for all intents and purposes equivalent to documents I could create and edit in other tools such as Microsoft Office and Google Docs/Sheets.
• Lack of an online portal for sharing documents necessitates the use of Google Sheets for automation/integration. Ideal would be an all-in-one solution.
• Having open-source software that provides common functionality eliminates the need for expensive licenses.
• Lack of dedicated support is negligible. Most issues can be resolved using online search.

Incentivized