Release 8.1

October 2014

The main new feature of this release is the introduction of the new HUGIN COM API and extensions to the support for Dynamic time-sliced Bayesian Networks.

The functionality to support reasoning about dynamic time-sliced systems using Bayesian networks introduced as part of version 8.0 has been extended. This includes the support for dynamic Bayesian networks in the HUGIN Webservice API and the option to include continuous chance nodes and function nodes in the networks (these nodes cannot have temporal clones though). Based on multiple customer requests, we are introducing the HUGIN COM API that, for instance, makes it possible to use HUGIN in a 64-bit version of Microsoft Excel.

HUGIN Graphical User Interface v8.1

The HUGIN Graphical User Interface has been improved with various new features. These include:

  • The DBN functionality has been extended. Now continuous chance nodes as well as discrete and continuous function nodes are now supported in DBN models with the restriction that they cannot have temporal clones.

  • The DBN functionality has been extended. Now continuous chance nodes as well as discrete and continuous function nodes are now supported in DBN models with the restriction that they cannot have temporal clones.

  • Functionality for Prediction and Bayesian filtering with DBNs has been included in the Data Frame.

  • The Preprocessing tool used in, for instance, the Learning Wizard, has been improved and changed name to Data Processing. Among the many new features is functionality that enables evaluation of prediction and Bayesian filters.

  • The Data Frame window has been extended with functionality to include the normalization constant computed during belief update, the logarithm of the normalization constant, and the probability of the evidence when propagating cases.

  • It is possible to report beliefs to the Data Frame window.

  • Default link groups have been introduced to make it easy to set the color of, for instance, information links in influence diagrams.

  • The Code Wizard has been extended to support both DBNs and object-oriented Bayesian networks and influence diagrams.

  • Function nodes and utility nodes can now be defined as interface nodes in object-oriented Bayesian networks and influence diagrams.

  • Under certain circumstances, the shortcuts could be lost. This has been fixed.

  • Other minor improvements.

Finally, work has been done to improve the performance of the HUGIN Graphical User Interface.

HUGIN Decision Engine v8.1

The HUGIN Decision Engine has been extended with the following features:

  • HUGIN Webservice API extended with support for object-oriented Bayesian networks and influence diagrams as well as DBNs

  • A new COM interface version of the HUGIN API - HUGIN COM is introduced. It replaces the now deprecated ActiveX server and enables both 32- and 64-bit applications to consume the HUGIN COM interface (i.e. HUGIN is now available to 64-bit Excel).

  • Responsiveness of web applications built using JavaScript for HUGIN web service API is speeded up by automatic re-fetching the set of HTTP cache items invalidated whenever a HUGIN function with side-effects is invoked.

  • The HUGIN Decision Engine now support saving object-oriented Bayesian networks and influence diagrams as well as DBNs in a HKB file.