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Java gets new maths know-how

Matthew Broersma ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 10 Aug 2009 16:14 BST

Apache Commons developers have released a major update to the Apache Commons Math project, which is designed to extend Java with specialised mathematical and statistical components.

Apache Commons was formerly a part of the Apache Foundation's Jakarta, an umbrella project for developers creating open-source software for the Java platform, but is now an independent project overseen by the organisation. In general, the Commons is intended to create and maintain reusable Java components.

The latest version of Apache Commons Math, version 2.0, is a major release that contains bug fixes, new features and changes to existing features, and is not compatible with earlier versions of the project.

The code, made available on Monday last week, can only be compiled and used with Java 5 or later, Apache developers wrote in the project release notes.

Among the new features are decomposition algorithms in the linear algebra package, support for sparce matrices and vectors, several new optimisation algorithms, support for curve fitting, new multistep integrators, and a Mersenne twister pseudo random number generator.

The new release fixes flaws in previous versions of the code.

"Users are encouraged to upgrade to this version, as in addition to new features, this release includes numerous bug fixes," the developers said.