New courses to learn data science productionization and MLOps techniques

The KNIME Learning Center is excited to announce a set of newly designed courses all around productionisation. They will teach data analysts, data engineers, and data scientists how to correctly productionize a data science application.

Production is the final stage in developing a data science application. To an extent, it is also the most meaningful stage since it makes your data science application available to others to consume.

The Data Science Life Cycle, illustrated by the infinity loop below, represents a standard for how to think about data science in the modern corporate environment. While the creation cycle on the left has not changed much over the years, the productionisation cycle on the right has. Starting from deployment the production cycle has been enriched with testing, validation, monitoring, auditing features, and frameworks for automatic updates.

Most productionization stages and techniques are relatively new, which means that knowledge of how to use them is not as widespread as one would wish for. To fill this space in productionization know-how, you can now join a set of new courses to learn more about the environments, steps, techniques, and best practices commonly applied to move a freshly developed data science application into production.

The whole process starts with development and testing on KNIME Analytics Platform and carefully moves the application to KNIME Business Hub for production. While KNIME Analytics Platform provides all necessary instruments for the creation phase, KNIME Business Hub provides all required features for a professional production phase.

Within the organization chart of the courses in the KNIME Learning Center, this new set occupies level L3. L1 and L2 courses address basic and advanced creation features in KNIME Analytics Platform to develop data science applications. Level L3 of our courses addresses the productionization of previously developed data science applications.

This new set of courses is available as a self-paced course or as an instructor-led course on the KNIME Learning Center page. All of these L3 courses prepare you for the L3 certification exam.

Would you like to upskill your team on productionization stages and best practices? Then enroll for any of the new L3 courses!

Data analysts, data engineers, and data scientists, although all using KNIME software, they all implement a different type of data science applications. Data analysts usually focus more on KPI visualization and therefore develop applications including dashboards and data apps. Data engineers tackle the data pipelines, moving data from source set A to repository B, possibly exposing an additional level of structured information. Finally, data scientists deal with predictive models, machine learning and deep learning algorithms, and recently with integration of external AI models. Given the different types of applications, does productionization mean the same to all data professionals? Well, mostly.

Therefore, we have designed not one but three L3 courses around productionization, for the three professional profiles. The instructor-led versions for these courses consist of four 1-hour lessons and overlap for three lessons out of four. The first lesson introduces the user to deployment and testing; the second lessons to the production features of KNIME Business Hub; the third lesson is custom for each professional profile; the fourth lesson expands on best practices and scalability.

As for the third custom lesson:

• In the “L3-DA Productionizing Data Apps” course, data analysts specialize on productionization of data apps, exploring all web-based visual elements on the KNIME Business Hub.

• In the “L3-DE Productionizing Data Pipelines” course, data engineers focus on productionization of data pipelines, maintaining data quality and governance rules using the KNIME Business Hub.

• In the “L3-CD Continuous Deployment and MLOps” course, data scientists deepen their knowledge on productionization of machine learning models and MLOps, also covering features from the CDDS - Continuous Deployment for Data Science - framework, all on the KNIME Business Hub.

Note. We recommend taking the L1 course and the respective L2 course prior to attending any L3 course, as they assume prior knowledge of KNIME Analytics Platform.

The content for both the instructor-led and self-paced courses is the same, but follow a slightly different structure to suit the respective mode of learning.

Join a self-paced course to be able to learn in your own time. You’ll be supported with videos and interactive images to help you tackle the hands-on exercises as you prepare to take the L3 certification exam. All self-paced courses are free of charge.

Join an instructor led course to have a data science expert provide you with structured guidance and knowledge. You’ll be able to ask questions about the exercises and your own projects and get real-time feedback. The instructor-led courses are paid courses.

Check the KNIME Events page for upcoming instructor-led courses.

For self-paced courses, you'll see that the L3-CD – Continuous Deployment and MLOps is already available as a self-paced course, with the L3-DE and L3-DA courses soon to follow.

If you are interested in teaching one of the new L3 Productionization courses, you can find the slides available free for download on the KNIME Educators Alliance teaching materials repository. Currently, the L3-DA and L3-CD slide decks are available. The slide deck for the L3-DE course will be added soon.

Together with the courses, we have also created a new L3 certification exam based on the new productionization courses. We understand the importance of being able to validate and show your level of expertise to the world.

The new L3 level certification - “L3: Proficiency in KNIME Software for Collaboration and Productionization” - validates your acquired expertise about productionizing data science applications.

The new L3 certification exam explores your knowledge about deployment, testing, versioning, scalability, and so on. In short, it tests all the relevant topics in productionization and governance. More specifically, the L3: Proficiency in KNIME Software for Collaboration and Productionization certification exam covers the following topics:

• General knowledge of the productionization process

• Testing

• Workflow invocation

• Integrated deployment

• Versioning

• Workflow execution and deployment

• Performance optimization and orchestration

Upon successful completion of the certification exam, you will receive an official certificate and the corresponding verified badge. All three L3 courses prepare you for the L3 certification exam. To take the L3 certification exam, you will need to have already obtained the L1 and L2 certifications.

L3 certification is priced at 100 dollars. However, we have an offer for you for the next three months.

You can use the promotion code L3-KBH-RELEASE (valid until the end of 2023) to take the new L3 certification exam for free over the next three months.

Remember that you can only take the exam twice in a row. If you fail both times, you will need to wait 90 days before being able to take it again. So come prepared! The exam is free for a limited period, but not guaranteed. You still need to know the basics about productionisation with KNIME software.

We have explored here the new resources around productionization offered by the KNIME Learning Center. These include:

• Three new courses around productionization of data science applications, each course dedicated to a specific data science professional profile (data analysts, data engineers, and data scientists)

• A new certification exam to evaluate your knowledge about productionization of data science applications

These resources fit into the L3 level of the course chart by KNIME Learning Center. L1 and L2 courses cover the basics of the creation process of data science applications, while L3 level courses cover most aspects of the productionization of data science applications.

Be the first one to be L3 certified! Get prepared by enrolling in the L3-CD self-paced course, or by attending the upcoming L3-DE or L3-DA instructor-led courses in October; then register for the L3 certification exam using the promotion code L3-KBH-RELEASE (valid until the end of 2023) and get fully L3 certified!