To extend and enhance the estimation software developed under the LATS 2001 project currently underway in London by integrating the theoretical developments made in WP2 and refined in WP5.
The specification of the estimation software will be an output of WP2 and be influenced by information from WP4 and WP5. However, an initial task of WP7 will be to confirm the specification through the production of a design document.
We may anticipate that the estimation software will be concerned with numerically intensive methods for the combination (convolution) of probability distributions (including MCMC methods), numerical calculation of derivatives, matrix algebra processing, and optimisation procedures. In some cases it will be appropriate to make use of commercially available software libraries for standard procedures. Licence costs for these libraries will be a direct cost for the work package. The work package will include the elements of the standard software life cycle of: design, programming, testing, documentation, deployment.
The software developed by the project will be varied and will not be in the nature of a specific software application. The database element will have a design that is general but its implementation will be specific to each of the environments in which it is used. The transferability of the system design, including that of the database will be aided through the use of standards for expressing the design, notably the UML standard design language and suitable software design tools based on the UML standard (e.g., Rational Rose Professional Data Modeller). The use of XML as the standard for structuring and handling much information will aid the portability of the architecture, especially with respect to metadata.
The project will make use of standard software where possible, but where algorithmic elements are developed by the project these will, if possible, be in the form of COM components that can be used by other systems, although requiring appropriate software to host the components. The generality of the COM standard makes this an efficient way of distributing specific software outputs from the project.
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