OpenForecast News

OpenForecast 0.5 was released on May 29, 2011. Version 0.4 has proven to be a very stable release and served all of my initial goals for the project. It has been downloaded over 16,000 times and already is used in many production systems. This long overdue update includes the following enhancements:

* Overloaded Forecaster.getBestForecast to allow the user to select which of the evaluation criteria (bias, MAD, MAPE, MSE, SAE, etc.) to use, or provide a reasonable default - as suggested by Paul Mars.... read more

Paul Mars has written a very good article explaining how to use OpenForecast from within your PHP code. The article is available at:

http://www.managementscience.nl/mos/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=44

OpenForecast was featured in the 2004 Forecasting Software Survey that appeared in the OR/MS Today December 2004 issue. For the on-line article, refer to:

http://lionhrtpub.com/orms/surveys/FSS/fss-fr.html

A new book by Teo Lachev has just been released by Manning Publications (http://www.manning.com/lachev). Titled, "Microsoft Reporting Services in Action", the book described the Microsoft .NET Reporting Services. Chapter 6 is available for free preview at http://www.manning-source.com/books/lachev/lachev_chp6.pdf and makes extensive use of OpenForecast.

Even if you're not using Visual J# and Microsoft .NET, you may still find the chapter on OpenForecast and reporting to be very helpful in your development.... read more

OpenForecast has just joined and been approved as a java.net member project. See the following URL for a list of all Java tools listed under the java.net community:

http://community.java.net/projects/community/javatools

OpenForecast is a package of general purpose, forecasting models written in Java that can be applied to any data series. No knowledge of forecasting is required. Using this package, the most appropriate algorithm for your data will be selected.

OpenForecast 0.4.0 was released on March 31, 2004. It is the largest update to date, and adds a number of new features including:

* an improved intelligent forecaster
* the addition of two new package with helper classes to ease the input and output of forecasting data.
* support for single, double and triple exponential smoothing models
* a re-organization of the examples and tests into a more standard directory structure.
* additional samples and tests
* updates to use JFreeChart 0.9.16 and JCommon 0.9.1
* minor changes to ease the compilation under Microsoft's C# .NET.... read more

Thanks to help from Teodor Lachev minor changes were made to the OpenForecast source code to allow easy (automated) conversion and subsequent compilation under Microsoft's Visual J#.

Note that these changes are currently only available in the latest version of the code available via CVS.

A first draft of User's Guide for OpenForecast has just been made available by the author, Steven Gould. This should help new users get started incorporating OpenForecast into their applications.

http://writing.stevengould.org/independent.html

OpenForecast was featured in the Forecasting Software Survey that appeared in the OR/MS Today February issue. For the on-line article, refer to:

http://lionhrtpub.com/orms/surveys/FSS/FSS.html

The latest release of OpenForecast, the open-source forecasting library written in Java, was released today. Version 0.3 enhancements include:

* Extensions to allow the Forecaster to do a better job of selecting the most appropriate forecasting model for your data.
* Support for user-defined coefficients in the Multiple Variable Linear Regression Model.
* The addition of a Moving Average Forecasting Model.
* The addition of a Naive Forecasting Model.
* Integration improvements making it easier to integrate OpenForecast into your Java application(s).
* New test cases.... read more

For increased visibility - and hopefully some help(!) - the OpenForecast library has been listed on INFORMS Online, the official web site of the Institute for Operations Research & Management Science.

http://www.informs.org/Resources/Computer_Programs/Java_Programs/