S-PLUS

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S-PLUS

Developer:	Insightful Corp.
Latest release:	7.0 / 2005
OS:	Windows, Unix/Linux
Use:	statistical package
License:	proprietary
Website:	S-PLUS

S-PLUS is an advanced statistics package built upon the S programming language. Sold by Insightful Corporation, S-Plus is a value-added commercial implementation of the S language, originaly developed at AT&T Bell Labs. S-plus is nearly identical to the open source implementation of the S language, commonly known as R. Most programs written in S-plus will run in an R environment. S-plus's full featured object-oriented programming capabilities and advanced analytical algorithms are slowly enabling it to become a fierce competitor to the SAS system.

[edit] Historical timeline

1988 S-PLUS is first produced by a Seattle-based start-up company called Statistical Sciences.

1993: Statistical Sciences acquires exclusive license to S and merges with MathSoft, becoming the Cambridge (Mass.) firm's Data Analysis Products Division (DAPD) and remaining in Seattle.

1995: S-PLUS 3.3 for Windows 95/NT. Matrix library, command history, trellis graphics

1996: S-PLUS 3.4 for UNIX. Trellis graphics, nlme library, hexagonal binning, cluster methods.

1997: S-PLUS 4 for Windows. New GUI, integration with Excel, editable graphics.

1998: S-PLUS 4.5 for Windows. Scatterplot brushing, create S-PLUS graphs from within Excel & SPSS.

1998: S-PLUS is available for Linux.

1998: S-PLUS 5 for Solaris.

1999: S-PLUS 5 for Solaris, Linux, HP-UX, IBM AIX, SGI Irix, and DEC Alpha. S-PLUS 2000 for Windows. nlme 3.3, quality control charting, new commands for data manipulation.

2000: S-PLUS 6 for Linux/UNIX. Java-based GUI, Graphlets, survival5, missing data library, robust library.

2001: MathSoft sells its Cambridge-based Engineering and Education Products Division (EEPD), changes name to Insightful Corporation, and moves headquarters to Seattle.

2001: S-PLUS Analytic Server 2.0.

2001: S-PLUS 6 for Windows (Excel integration, C++ classes/libraries for connectivity, Graphlets, S version 4, missing data library, robust library).

2002: StatServer 6. Student edition of S-PLUS now free.

2003: S-PLUS 6.2 New reporting, database integration, improved Graphlets, ported to AIX, libraries for correlated data, Bayesian methods, multivariate regressions.

2004: Insightful purchases the S language from Lucent Technologies for $2 million.

2004: S+ArrayAnalyzer 2.0 released.

2005: S-PLUS 7.0 released. BigData library for working with arbitrarily large data sets, S-PLUS Workbench (Eclipse development tool). Insightful Miner 7.0 released.

2006: S-PLUS 8 Beta released. New package system, language extensions, Workbench debugger.