Tech Tip: Calling NAG C Library Routines From Java

The NAG C Library contains many mathematical and statistical routines which are useful for software developers. Areas covered include linear algebra, optimization, quadrature, differential equations, regression analysis, and time series analysis. Although written in C, the functionality of the library can be accessed from other languages, including C++, and on PCs, DLL versions of the library can be exploited in many ways. This ability to make use of the NAG C Library is certainly true for Java also. Please follow the links below for more information and contact us if you have specific computational uses of Java in mind.

For someone needing to perform numerical computations, one approach is to create Java classes implementing the required functionality; a group who have made progress in this direction, partly by writing new code and partly by converting pre-existing code from other languages into Java, is the Numerics Working Group of the Java Grande Forum. The JavaNumerics web page gives much useful information, including discussion of the difficulties of using Java for numerical computation due to constraints imposed by Java as it currently stands.

To read the entire report, please see www.nag.co.ukm/doc/TechRep/html/Tr1_04/Tr1_04.html.

For specific technical advice in using NAG's products, please contact our technical experts.

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