Adaytum Planning is a highly successful business planning product. In the market segment known
as "Budget Management Software", Adaytum is the market leader in its home market the United
Kingdom, and has captured 3-4% of the US market after 18 months of sales in this area.
APL is a key factor in the success of this product. The original ideas behind the product are
clearly inspired by the APL language. 15 years later, as the market catches up with these ideas
and the product has become a commercial sucess, APL is still the most important language used
by our development group. We believe that APL gives us a very significant competitive edge
when thinking about and implementing tools for multi-dimensional computation under control
of super-users, compared to our competitors who come from a relational database environment
with traditional programming languages.
However, a modern Windows product requires standard interfaces to ODBC, COM and the
"Web". APL must be carefully wrapped and extensively interfaced in order to be a marketable
product. Increasingly, our development team must combine the powerful application features of
APL with interfaces and front ends which must be implemented using Visual Basic, C++ or Java.
The presentation will focus on how Adaytum combines the use of APL with other technologies
in a rapidly growing development group which currently numbers approximately 15 developers.
PL02 The genetic programming cookbook
Andreas Geyer-Schulz
Department of Applied Computer Science
Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration
This talk is about the art and science of genetic programming. In the science part we introduce
simple genetic algorithms over k-bounded context-free languages as a general theoretical
framework for genetic programming and we present a survey of the (theoretical) results achieved
in this setting: e.g. uniform initialization, generalization of various genetic programming
approaches, equivalence transformations on grammars, compound derivations, abstraction and
speedup. We compare genetic programming with simple genetic algorithms and show that the
transition matters: Because there is no best grammar for genetic programming, a search for better
grammars usually pays.
However, in all practical applications there is an element of art involved: the design of a (little)
language for genetic programming. The second part of this talk is devoted to the art of genetic
programming.We discuss language design principles and prescribe recipes for genetic
programming in various environments. The purpose of these recipes is to show informally, how
to use a grammar to solve specific problems. Examples range from agent languages to layout
languages, the application domains from complex dynamic systems to combinatorial optimization
problems. To conclude:``The language, like a seed, is the genetic system which gives
ourmillions of small acts the power to form a whole.'' (From Christopher Alexander, The
Timeless Way of Building, 1979.)
Eric Baelen, the President of APL2000 Inc, and a long time APL user, will discuss how to
succeed in business as a developer of APL-based software. He will describe the history of
LEX2000 Inc, and of other successful businesses based on APL products or making major use
of APL. He will discuss business and development practices which are likely to lead to
success. He will explain why, in his view, the prospects for an APL-based business are bright
today.
Complex financial systems are an area in which APL has traditionally had a strong position.
However, software systems like the portfolio management systems (PMS) have usually
been implemented on UNIX or mainframe platforms. The presentation will describe a PC
based PMS which is considered by some APL professionals to be one of the most advanced
APL applications in this area.
Created in early 80's as a DOS application, delivering portfolio management facilities to small
and medium-sized investors, SOFIA has become the de facto standard for the Italian insurance
companies. One of two existing Windows versions has been developed by InfoStroy, is
successful at the Scandinavian and Russian markets under the name GAMA. The total amount
of money managed by the system in Europe exceeds 72 billion dollars.
Initially written in APL*PLUS PC, SOFIA/GAMA has been moved through all possible
versions of APL*PLUS for personal computers, including APL*PLUS III for Windows. In
1992 InfoStroy joined forces with APL Italiana and has migrated the software to Dyalog
APL/W. As the development is performed in different countries for different markets in both
DOS and Windows environments, special tools have been developed to support several teams
working simultaneously, multilingual functionality, upward and backward compatibility of the
computation kernel between different APL platforms. GAMA/SOFIA is fully integrated with
mainstream products and technologies such as Microsoft Office, Internet Explorer and OD.