Introducing Maple 7
Maple 7, the newest version of the widely
adopted Maple mathematics product line, is already stirring
up a lot of interest.
Maple 7 delivers dramatic improvements in the fundamental
areas that customers have always valued: mathematical power,
connectivity with other technology and the widest offering
of free resources in the industry, as embodied by the Maple
Application Centre. You’ll find demonstrations of Maple
7’s new features at http://mapleapps.adeptscience.co.uk
MATHEMATICAL POWER
Waterloo Maple’s team of mathematicians collaborates
with universities and research institutions from all over
the world to equip Maple with the most powerful mathematical
algorithms known. Maple 7 builds on this intellectual foundation
with new functionality in differential equations (DEs),
units management, numerical computation and many advanced
mathematical fields.
The Undisputed Leader in Differential
Equations
Maple 7 delivers a sweeping range of new tools for solving
and analysing DEs symbolically, particularly non-linear
ODEs and systems of PDEs. In a systematic competitive study,
Maple 7 solved 97% of the benchmark ODEs in E. Kamke’s
famous textbook "Differential Equations: Solution Methods
and Solutions." The next closest competitor solved
only 77%.
Maple 7’s numerical DE solvers have also undergone
an overhaul. For the first time, Maple can solve boundary-value
problems (BVPs).
Initial-value problems (IVPs) can now be solved to arbitrary
accuracy, and twice as fast as they could in Maple 6.
Units and Dimensional Management
Maple 7 introduces a new package for managing units and
dimensions. Problems in engineering and science can now
be modelled and solved with appropriate dimensions using
any modern unit system (and even some historical systems!).
The system recognizes over 500 standard units. (See the
Tips and Techniques feature article.)
Something for Everyone
New maths packages have been added for users across a spectrum
of technical backgrounds. For students, Maple 7 now allows
computation to be restricted to the domain of real numbers.
For seasoned mathematicians, Maple 7 offers new packages
for specialised research areas, including orthogonal series,
rational normal forms, linear functional systems and linear
operators. There is a new curve-fitting package for statisticians,
and new string- and list- manipulation tools for computer
scientists.
Enhanced Efficiency at Every Level
Maple 6 saw the first incorporation of NAG’s fast numerical
C routines into Maple’s Linear Algebra package. In
Maple 7, further incorporation of NAG routines has sped
up numerical integration by factors ranging from 20 to 50.
Maple 7 also brings increased efficiency to its numerical
linear algebra routines, especially for the UNIX platform,
including support for banded, packed and sparse matrices
through LAPACK, Atlas and Vendor BLAS.
CONNECTIVITY WITH THE WEB
In addition to enhanced mathematics, Maple 7 introduces
standards-based connectivity with the Web.
Real-time Internet Communication
In previous versions of Maple, users imported data into
Maple applications as static files. If data were needed
from a Web site, the user would first have to download the
Web page’s content into a file and then read the file
into Maple. Maple 7’s new package for TCP/IP sockets
enables real-time, bi-directional communication with the
Internet within a Maple worksheet. For example, a user could
establish a connection with The FT’s website from a
Maple worksheet and download share price data into a portfolio
optimisation model; or you could connect to a weather site
and pull next week’s forecast into a meteorological
model.
MathML 2.0
Maple 7 is the first major product in the mathematics arena
to offer full support for the W3C’s new MathML 2.0
standard. MathML is an extension of HTML that encodes both
the proper display and the meaning of mathematics for use
in intersoftware communication, including the display of
Web pages. In Maple 6, all Maple outputs were exported to
HTML as .gif images. In Maple 7, users have the option to
export using MathML, so that Maple expressions are rendered
on the Web page without the use of .gif images.
XML Support
Maple 7 provides support for creation, manipulation, import
and export of XML data through its XMLTools package. Users
can now publish Maple solutions as XML data files or HTML/XHTML
Web pages, or import XML data files into Maple applications
and bring all of Maple's power to bear on its analysis.
New Resources
Maple 7 equips users with more than technology. Maple 7
customers can access the work of hundreds of mathematicians
and scientists through free applications and add-on packages
on the Maple Application Centre at http://mapleapps.adeptscience.co.uk
For example, new course materials for physics and 1st and
2nd semester calculus and have just been made available
in the Power Tools section (see story on p. 6). Since January
of 2001, the number of applications available on MapleApps
has grown from 600 to over 1,000.
For Maple 7 price details, upgrade and licence options,
visit our webstore at http://www.adeptstore.co.uk
or call our Maple specialists on 01462 480055
