Visual Numerics is pleased to announce the latest release of
PV-WAVE®, version 8.0. In this release, there are many new features and enhancements, which further strengthen and expand upon PV-WAVE's capabilities for robust visual data analysis.

PV-WAVE is an array based programming language used to build and deploy Visual Data Analysis applications. These applications let users manipulate and visualize simple to extremely complex datasets to detect and display patterns, trends, anomalies and other vital information that would otherwise be overlooked in their data.

PV-WAVE 8.0 Now Includes:

• Enhanced Visualization
  • Double Precision Plotting
  • Statistical Charting
  • Enhanced VTK Functionality
• Expanded Data Capabilities
  • XML support
  • HDF5 support
• New and Enhanced Analysis Techniques
  • Optimization
  • Multidimensional polynomial processing
• Enhanced Performance and Language
  • OpenMP
  • Array Processing
  • User interface convenience

   

Now, Experience the Robust Analysis and Visualization Capabilities of PV-WAVE with Added Functionality and Significant Enhancements.

Find out more about the new release:

Link to PV-WAVE 8.0 Press Release
What's New with this Release
Link to PV-WAVE Web Pages
PV-WAVE 8.0 Product Sheet
PV-WAVE Documentation Page
 

Visual Numerics' IMSL Fortran 5.0 Library Targeted for Next Release of Intel Fortran for Windows

Visual Numerics has recently announced that it is optimizing the IMSL^TM Fortran Library 5.0, which is targeted for use with the next release of the Intel® Fortran Compiler for Windows. The combination of the IMSL Fortran Library with the Intel Fortran Compiler allows Fortran developers to take advantage of robust mathematical and statistical algorithms optimized for Intel's compiler technology and build high-performance applications on Microsoft Windows-based systems using Intel® Pentium®, Intel® Xeon^TM and Intel® Itanium® processor families.

Click here to read the press release

PV-WAVE® Wins Scientific Computing & Instrumentation
2003 Readers Choice Award

Earlier this year, Scientific Computing & Instrumentation asked the readers of their magazine to vote for their favorite products based on quality, reliability, and value. This month, the winners as well as the top two finalists in each category were announced. PV-WAVE was a 2003 Reader's Choice finalist in the Visualization category.

Click here to read more

Visual Numerics to Attend SFTE Show

34th Annual SFTE Symposium
September 15-19, 2003
 

Visual Numerics will attend The Annual Society of Flight Test Engineers Symposium in Portsmouth, Virginia. The Symposium will feature the latest developments and innovations in flight test process and technology. Over 200 international aerospace professionals who have an interest in flight testing are expected to attend. The theme for this year's show is "A Century of Flight Test - From the Wright Brothers to the Right Stuff".

Click here for more information on the show

August Tech Tip - CNL

Accessing CNL From Visual Basic

If you are one of a growing number of developers that are accessing CNL from Visual Basic, you have likely run into the problem of passing evaluating functions in VB to the CNL routines. Since CNL uses the __cdecl calling mechanism to allow optional arguments, there is a conflict with VB which uses __stdcall. The best way to handle this is to use an intermediate "wrapper C library" which translates the calls between VB and CNL. This works well for most arguments types such as float and int, as it is simply a matter of aligning the correctly sized data types between the two languages.

However, evaluating functions provide a greater challenge because VB stores arrays differently than C does. Since CNL usually makes many calls to the evaluating function, it must pass arrays back and forth between CNL and the evaluating function. If the arrays are in VB, the data in the array must be put into a "safe array" when going to VB and taken out of the safe array and put into a regular C array when going back to CNL.

The easiest workaround is to put the evaluating function in the wrapper DLL, so that the arrays do not have to be loaded and unloaded when being passed back and forth to VB. The problem with this approach is it does not provide a "black box" solution, because changes to the evaluating function have to be done in the wrapper DLL and then recompiled. A better approach is to put the evaluating function in the VB code and pass it to the wrapper DLL. Inside the DLL, a function pointer is set to the passed in VB function. Here is how it is done:

// set global function pointer to point to VB evaluating function func_ptr = (void (__stdcall *) (int *, int *, int *, SAFEARRAY **, SAFEARRAY **, float *, SAFEARRAY **)) vb_fcn;

In the actual DLL call to the CNL routine, a regular C function, vb_evaluating_function is passed to CNL as the acting evaluating function. When it is subsequently called by CNL, it converts the information in the C arrays into safe arrays and then calls the evaluating function in VB (which it knows the location of through the function pointer, func_ptr that was set earlier). When the evaluating function in VB is finished, it returns back to the C wrapper DLL and the information is pulled back out of the safe arrays into the regular C memory array before retuning to CNL. This continues for as many calls as the CNL routine makes to the evaluating function. Special functions exist in C that facilitate the translation of the safe arrays, and typically look like this:

// translate g[] to VB safearray
for (i = 0; i < m; i++)
{
floatTemp = g[i];
ix[0]=i;
SafeArrayPutElement(g_safe, ix, &floatTemp);
}

There are also functions to create safe arrays and to get safe array elements from within C. Using these techniques, the roughly 40 functions that require an evaluating function in CNL can be called from VB with the evaluating function coded up in the VB code.

Download the August Wallpaper

The latest Visual Numerics' calendar wallpaper is now available. Use this calendar to track special Visual Numerics' events from your desktop.

Download now!

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