Orange (software)
Encyclopedia
Orange is a component-based data mining
Data mining
Data mining , a relatively young and interdisciplinary field of computer science is the process of discovering new patterns from large data sets involving methods at the intersection of artificial intelligence, machine learning, statistics and database systems...

 and machine learning
Machine learning
Machine learning, a branch of artificial intelligence, is a scientific discipline concerned with the design and development of algorithms that allow computers to evolve behaviors based on empirical data, such as from sensor data or databases...

 software suite
Software suite
A software suite or application suite is a collection of computer programs, usually application software and programming software of related functionality, often sharing a more-or-less common user interface and some ability to smoothly exchange data with each other.Sometimes software makers...

, featuring friendly yet powerful and flexible visual programming front-end for explorative data analysis
Data analysis
Analysis of data is a process of inspecting, cleaning, transforming, and modeling data with the goal of highlighting useful information, suggesting conclusions, and supporting decision making...

 and visualization
Visualization
The term visualization or visualisation may refer to:* Creative visualization* Flow visualization* Geovisualization* Illustration* Information graphics, visual representations of information, data, or knowledge* Information visualization...

, and Python
Python (programming language)
Python is a general-purpose, high-level programming language whose design philosophy emphasizes code readability. Python claims to "[combine] remarkable power with very clear syntax", and its standard library is large and comprehensive...

 bindings and libraries for scripting. It includes comprehensive set of components for data preprocessing, feature scoring and filtering, modeling, model evaluation, and exploration techniques. It is implemented in C++
C++
C++ is a statically typed, free-form, multi-paradigm, compiled, general-purpose programming language. It is regarded as an intermediate-level language, as it comprises a combination of both high-level and low-level language features. It was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup starting in 1979 at Bell...

 (speed) and Python
Python (programming language)
Python is a general-purpose, high-level programming language whose design philosophy emphasizes code readability. Python claims to "[combine] remarkable power with very clear syntax", and its standard library is large and comprehensive...

 (flexibility). Its graphical user interface builds upon cross-platform
Cross-platform
In computing, cross-platform, or multi-platform, is an attribute conferred to computer software or computing methods and concepts that are implemented and inter-operate on multiple computer platforms...

 Qt framework. Orange is distributed free under the GPL. It is maintained and developed at the Bioinformatics Laboratory of the Faculty of Computer and Information Science, University of Ljubljana
University of Ljubljana
The University of Ljubljana is the oldest and largest university in Slovenia. With 64,000 enrolled graduate and postgraduate students, it is among the largest universities in Europe.-Beginnings:...

, Slovenia
Slovenia
Slovenia , officially the Republic of Slovenia , is a country in Central and Southeastern Europe touching the Alps and bordering the Mediterranean. Slovenia borders Italy to the west, Croatia to the south and east, Hungary to the northeast, and Austria to the north, and also has a small portion of...

.

History

  • In 1996, the University of Ljubljana
    University of Ljubljana
    The University of Ljubljana is the oldest and largest university in Slovenia. With 64,000 enrolled graduate and postgraduate students, it is among the largest universities in Europe.-Beginnings:...

     and Jožef Stefan Institute
    Jožef Stefan Institute
    The Jožef Stefan Institute , is the largest research institute in Slovenia. The main research areas are physics, chemistry, molecular biology, biotechnology, information technologies, reactor physics, energy and environment...

     started development of ML*, a machine learning framework in C++
    C++
    C++ is a statically typed, free-form, multi-paradigm, compiled, general-purpose programming language. It is regarded as an intermediate-level language, as it comprises a combination of both high-level and low-level language features. It was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup starting in 1979 at Bell...

    .
  • In 1997, Python
    Python (programming language)
    Python is a general-purpose, high-level programming language whose design philosophy emphasizes code readability. Python claims to "[combine] remarkable power with very clear syntax", and its standard library is large and comprehensive...

     bindings were developed for ML*, which together with emerging Python modules formed a joint framework called Orange.
  • During the following years most major algorithms for data mining and machine learning have been developed either in C++ (Orange's core) or in Python modules.
  • In 2002, first prototypes to create a flexible graphical user interface were designed, using Pmw Python megawidgets.
  • In 2003, graphical user interface was redesigned and re-developed for Qt framework using PyQt
    PyQt
    PyQt is a Python binding of the cross-platform GUI toolkit Qt. It is one of the alternatives for GUI programming in Python to Tkinter, which is bundled with Python. Other popular alternatives are PySide, PyGTK, and wxPython. Like Qt, PyQt is free software. PyQt is implemented as a Python...

     Python bindings. The visual programming framework was defined, and development of widgets (graphical components of data analysis pipeline) has begun.
  • In 2005, extensions for data analysis in bioinformatics
    Bioinformatics
    Bioinformatics is the application of computer science and information technology to the field of biology and medicine. Bioinformatics deals with algorithms, databases and information systems, web technologies, artificial intelligence and soft computing, information and computation theory, software...

     was created.
  • In 2008, Mac OS X DMG and Fink
    Fink
    The Fink project is an effort to port and package open-source Unix programs to Mac OS X. Fink uses dpkg and APT , as well as its own frontend program, fink ....

    -based installation packages were developed.
  • In 2009, over 100 widgets were created and maintained.
  • From 2009, Orange is in 2.0 beta and web site offers installation packages based on daily compilation cycle.

Platform availability

Orange is supported on various versions of Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...

, Apple's Mac OS X
Mac OS X
Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...

, and Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...

.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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