DADiSP Product Background

About DADiSP

DADiSP® (Data Analysis and Display), developed by DSP Development Corporation of Newton, MA, is the first general purpose personal productivity software for scientists and engineers. Through a sophisticated integration of powerful computational and analytical capabilities, DADiSP allows users to depict and manipulate large amounts of data in an interactive, graphical environment.

The Standard

DADiSP has long been considered the standard for data analysis in laboratory automation, data reduction, speech processing, sonar and radar applications, digital signal processing, computer-aided engineering, and other fields. It delivers the power, flexibility, extendibility and ease-of-use that make it applicable to a wide range of technical computing tasks.

The Worksheet Model

DADiSP is a general purpose analytical tool for scientists and engineers much like the spreadsheet is a tool for financial analysts. However, DADiSP replaces the rows-and-columns ledger format with a graphical interface that meets the technical user's needs for interactive visual analysis of large amounts of data. A DADiSP Worksheet consists of a series of windows in which data is displayed and manipulated in a variety of graphical and tabular styles simultaneously, according to the user's requirements and applications. DADiSP users can perform multiple complex operations in one window and view results in other windows.

Analysis Windows

Dozens of windows may be created and viewed on the screen at once, with the ability to zoom in or out of graphs, to scroll, and to overlay graphs as needed. In addition, changes made to a singe window automatically cause dependent windows to recalculate and update. In all cases, the user interacts with the data visually, through the keyboard, a mouse, through user-defined SPL (Series Processing Language) routines and DADiSP command scripts or through existing, application-specific external programs that work seamlessly with DADiSP.

Over 1000 Functions

The multiple windows allow DADiSP to perform a variety of tasks such as data reduction, pattern recognition, peak analysis, statistical analysis, mathematical analysis, Fourier transforms, convolutions, digital filtering, waterfall plots, three-dimensional plots, and many other operations. There are over 1000 functions available for analysis.

Powerful GUI

Aside from its power and flexibility, one of the main features of DADiSP is its graphical user interface which speeds analysis for the novice user and the experienced "power user" alike. Using a variety of icons, menus, property sheets and dialog boxes, DADiSP guides the user through the needed computational and analytical tools. Also important to users and managers making buying decisions, DADiSP presents the same interface across computing platforms, from PCs to workstations. This simplifies and minimizes training and ensures users that skills learned in one version of DADiSP are readily applicable to any other.

Flexible Data Sources

DADiSP allows users to enter data manually or bring in data sets from a variety of sources including ASCII, CSV, PRN, 8-bit byte, 16-bit integer, 32-bit integer, IEEE single and double precision floating point files, or directly from most common data measurement or acquisition devices.

Extendible

With command file, user-definable macro capability, and SPL, DADiSP also provides the flexibility and extendibility needed to customize the software and automate DADiSP sessions for specific applications requirements.

Supported Hardware

DADiSP supports most of the popular desktop computer systems in use at technical organizations. DADiSP also runs under X-Windows Motif on workstations from Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Concurrent, Digital Equipment Corporation, NeXT, and Silicon Graphics. DADiSP runs on IBM PCs, and compatible microcomputers under DOS and Windows. DADiSP also supports IEEE-488 based instrumentation and many popular data acquisition boards. In fact, an organization with heterogeneous hardware and operating systems could standardize on DADiSP as a general purpose software tool and be assured of compatibility and consistency across hardware platforms.

DSP continually upgrades DADiSP in response to the increased accessibility and demand for powerful and very low-cost PC's and the growing need among technical users for a truly general purpose productivity software package.

Over 20 Years of Experience

Based on more then 20 years of experience serving the technical market, DSP extended existing DADiSP features and added many new ones to address an expanding market. Key new features of DADiSP are:

• Enhanced and streamlined user interface
• Standalone, external Worksheet files (.dwk)
• Active Document Support for embedding into Word, Excel, etc.
• Just in Time memory management for faster calculations
• Dual interface ActiveX support
• Text and drawing toolbar
• Expanded dialog boxes and property sheets
• Right click quick menus
• SPL (Series Processing Language) with debugger
• Over 100 new SPL analysis routines
• Enhanced plotting and presentation graphics
• Preview mode

Feature Rich

In addition to these new features, DADiSP offers the ability to capture data from numerous sources, multiple data views, a wide array of mathematical and graphical analysis functions, extensive signal processing features, ActiveX and the DSP Pipeline to run external programs from within DADiSP, textual and graphic annotation of windows, no limits on data size, speed and 8-byte IEEE standard double precision arithmetic, and high quality graphics and text output.

Technical Productivity Tool

Just as Excel serves as a general purpose application for business and financial users, DADiSP offers a robust set of features to serve as a rich and diverse productivity tool for scientists and engineers.

The Market Need

Before DADiSP, there was no single general purpose productivity package for the technical user. Traditional financial spreadsheets were powerful and effective for manipulating numerical data, but required extensive customization to meet users' needs. Designed for general business use, spreadsheets were cumbersome for visual analysis of large data sets.

Technical software applications have been available for PC's, but most packages are designed to perform a very specific task. Like spreadsheets, these packages require extensive customization.

General Purpose Solution

DADiSP fulfills the need for a general purpose software package that is designed specifically for the technical user. Although it can be customized, it does not require customization to get the job done.

Powerful PC's

Another important factor driving this need is the rapid growth of the technical PC market. Prices have fallen while computing power has jumped, making it feasible for many organizations to place high performance PC's on every engineer's desk. General purpose software is needed to allow companies and individuals to reap the full benefit of the competitive advantages provided by this powerful hardware.

Market Tested

DADiSP's market-tested power and flexibility make it an ideal software tool for the workstation or high-end PC user in a technical organization.

DADiSP Modules

A number of add-in modules are available for DADiSP, including:

• DADiSP/AdvDSP performs a wide variety of advanced DSP algorithms, including advanced FFT analysis, power spectral density estimation, digital interpolation and spectrum analysis.
• DADiSP/COMTRADE automatically imports a popular data file format for the power industry.
• DADiSP/Controls allows for easy and accurate design, analysis and simulation of both discrete and continuous linear time invariant single-input/single-output (SISO) controllers.
• DADiSP/Dataq File imports and exports Dataq WDQ files.
• DADiMP is a standalone module that imports ASCII or Binary files directly into DADiSP.
• DADiSP/Filters allows for FIR and IIR digital filter design and analysis.
• GPIBLab collects data from IEEE-488 Instruments and requires no programming.
• DADiSP/MAT File imports MAT files created by MATLAB and similar programs.
• DADiSP/NeuralNet provides direct and easy access to the demonstrated predictive power and pattern recognition capability of neural networking technology.
• DADiSP/Octave performs ANSI and IEC compatible 1/N fractional octave analysis and display.
• DADiSP/SRS performs shock response spectrum computations and analysis.
• DADiSP/Stats performs a variety of statistical tests and presents statistical information graphically.
• DADiSP/WAV can read, write, edit and play PCM .WAV audio files.

Distribute Stand-Alone Applications

The DADiSP Application Builder is a component form of DADiSP that allows stand-alone applications to embed DADiSP's analytical and/or graphical functionality with royalty free distribution.

Available Worldwide

DADiSP is available directly from DSP Development or from its worldwide network of distributors including VARs, OEMs, software catalogs and computer and instrumentation companies with whom DSP has cooperative marketing arrangements.