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COPYRIGHT 2004 Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences
In the December 2003 issue, I reviewed Mathematica 5 from operations research professionals' viewpoint [1]. I wrote how version 5 is compelling for O.R. professionals who may have been intrigued by Mathematica software in the past but did not consider it useful for their profession, at least not over the numerical and statistical packages they already use. I was initially hesitant to review version 5.1, but the additional features in terms of the Internet, graphical user interface (GUI) development, and data handling and visualization alone can be considered as a major upgrade in contrast to what the version increment would suggest.
Version 5 had introduced advanced numerical analysis, linear programming--interior point as well as simplex method variants--and sparse matrix manipulation with fast algorithms that compete with dedicated numerical software tools. Previous versions already had probabilistic and statistical functions and calculations, nonlinear algorithms and combinatorial calculations, so version 5 offers many features to interest O.R. professionals.
Version 5.1 has many new features as listed at the Wolfram Research Web site (www.wolfram.com). This is a long list divided into enhancements for numerical computation, symbolic computation, language system, etc. However, I will focus on the added Internet, GUI and data handling features. Included in version 5.1 is the GUIKit that allows a user to create a GUI running on top of Mathematica for other users to do specific things. You can access Web services offered by other providers from within Mathematica and use the offered functionality as a Mathematica function. Data in spreadsheets (MS Excel) and databases can be directly accessed and drawn/analyzed in more ways. For the numerically inclined, piecewise functions have been introduced.
Web Services
I USED TO THINK OF WEB SERVICES as one more overhyped technology (as was the opinion of a group of CIOs surveyed by InfoWorld back in 2001), but it has been coming along nicely. The idea behind Web services is that a "program" is available over the Web, and you can use its functionality in your own program. In other words, think of a Web service as an object available via the Internet for use in your program. In general there may be cost or access issues, but there are many freely available Web services available mainly to provide information. Also, you may have Web services available within your own organization or you may provide your programs as Web services for others to use.
Mathematica 5.1 allows users to query a Web site for the available services and to use these services as Mathematica functions. The functionality...
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