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Differences between Wolfram Desktop and Programming Cloud

Chris Malven
Posted 10 years ago

I just updated my Wolfram Programming Cloud subscription so I would have access to Wolfram Desktop, hoping that it would provide the same interactive programming features as the Programming Cloud but with improved performance.

The most noteworthy difference is the output preview I get for each cell. For instance, when I enter the following into the programming cloud:

EntityList[EntityClass["AdministrativeDivision", "AllUSStatesPlusDC"]]

I get a nicely formatted visual view of the list of states included in the result.

enter image description here

When I enter the same thing in Wolfram Desktop, I get this:

enter image description here

Obviously not nearly as nice! But things get even stranger after that. If I take that entity list in each and do the following:

AdministrativeDivisionData[%, "Population"]

In the cloud I get the nice:

enter image description here

And in the desktop I get the expression:

enter image description here

Is there a way to tell Wolfram Desktop to produce output that is similar to the output produced by the programming cloud? Its far more difficult (and less fun) for me as a Wolfram Language novice to experiment in the Desktop version because of these differences, but the Programming Cloud is far too sluggish and buggy for me to get any serious work done.
POSTED BY: Chris Malven
12 Replies
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Kenneth Odom
Kenneth Odom
Posted 10 years ago

Get["EntityFramework`"] did work for most things for me, however, has anyone tried to use "FlightData"? It does not produce anything, and when I click on the Wolfram Documentation from inside Mathematica, I get an error that says..."paclet:ref/FlightData" could not be found."
POSTED BY: Kenneth Odom
Kenneth Odom
Kenneth Odom
Posted 10 years ago

To clarify... this is happening on Windows 7 running home version MMA 10.1 and on a Mac running Yosemite OSX and MMA 10.1.
POSTED BY: Kenneth Odom

Ah, thanks. Executing Get["EntityFramework`"] fixed the problem for me.
POSTED BY: Arno Bosse

There is a thread about problems with EntityValue[] and related functionality.

Some people are having luck by executing Get["EntityFramework`"]

which may resolve the problem, if only temporarily. Other people have had the problem only to have it disappear due to some voodoo. I had the problem with Mathematica, and it went away 'by magic'. See the other discussion for details.

Tech support is aware of the problem for Mathematica 10.1. Someone should file a bug report for the cloud and Wolfram Desktop -- I would do it, but I do not use these products.
POSTED BY: George Woodrow III

It's odd that the Desktop session (sometimes) doesn't load with EntityFramework, though. Theoretically, all Cloud sessions should be provisioned with all default packages loaded.
POSTED BY: Jesse Friedman

I think that this may be a bug introduced with version 10.1 (which I believe Wolfram Desktop is based on). It could also be an issue with the paclet updates that Wolfram periodically feeds -- the latter is just a speculation, but it might account for some people seeing a 'magic' resolution to the problem.
POSTED BY: George Woodrow III

I may be wrong, but as I understand it, the Wolfram Desktop is really just a desktop interface to the Wolfram Programming Cloud. As such, expressions evaluated in the Desktop are actually evaluated on Programming Cloud kernels, which should all be initiated with EntityFramework loaded.
POSTED BY: Jesse Friedman

Wolfram Desktop is essentially a rebranded Mathematica, with slightly different features and support. It is only available as an option to the subscription Wolfram Programming Cloud (other options coming soon) at a certain level. The web page describing it says you use the local computer to do the computations, which makes things more responsive, and you can use your local GPU. Right now, there is a special at the developer level. So, any issues with Mathematica will probably be reflected in the Wolfram desktop, assuming that they are at the same version. Considering that the same bug appeared on both, I'd say that the code bases are close to identical.
POSTED BY: George Woodrow III

Hi,

I have added that to my "issue report" regarding Mathematica 10.1.

Cheers,

Marco
POSTED BY: Marco Thiel

I'm running MMA Home Edition v10.1.0 on OSX Yosemite and I can confirm that none of my EntityList commands are evaluating either. For example, EntityList["River"] just returns EntityList[River].
POSTED BY: Arno Bosse
Chris Malven
Chris Malven
Posted 10 years ago

Thanks Jesse.

I've installed Wolfram Desktop on three different machines (all Macs running 10.10 Yosemite) and have had the exact same results on both. There really is no "install" process for the Mac app. You download the app and drag it to your Applications folder.

I'm not having any issue with response lag time, I'm just not getting the output I would expect. Pretty disappointed so far.
POSTED BY: Chris Malven

The outputs you're showing indicate that the Desktop actually isn't evaluating the commands at all. I suggest you reinstall the Desktop and try again.

Note, however, that the Desktop does call the Wolfram Cloud for every request, so you'll have a similar response time to the Programming Cloud web interface, just without any client-side lag. If you want computation to occur on your machine, you should consider Mathematica.
POSTED BY: Jesse Friedman
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