Software Development Kit
As the market leader in business forecasting software, Forecast Pro is the obvious choice for software developers looking to add forecasting to their applications. The Forecast Pro SDK is a totally seamless forecasting solution which generates accurate statistically-based forecasts using the same state-of-the-art methodology found in off-the-shelf versions of Forecast Pro.
SDK Components
At the core of the Forecast Pro SDK is a library of forecasting functions. The library is available as either a Windows dynamic link library (dll) or a Linux Shared Library. The library can either be called directly from your application or indirectly using one of several interfaces provided as part of the Forecast Pro SDK.
The library was written in Visual C++. The calling program provides data structures containing the time series to be forecasted, instructions indicating how the forecasts should be prepared and room for the output. The library calculates the forecasts and writes out the results, including: forecasts; confidence limits; safety stocks; model details and summary statistics.
The Forecast Pro SDK includes a .NET wrapper allowing .NET applications to call the wrapper which in turn calls the library. A Java Native Interface (JNI) bridge using the same strategy is also included for Java applications.
Finally, the Forecast Pro SDK also includes an executable program that can be launched from the command line which does not require compiling any code. This application silently reads input from CSV files, calls the library to generate the forecasts and writes the output to a CSV file.
The SDK Advantage
Business Forecast Systems has been the leader in forecasting software since 1986. With more than 40,000 installations worldwide, our software has forecasted literally billions of time series. Over the years, our clients have sent us hundreds of “oddball” time series that generated poor forecasts. The Forecast Pro team has carefully analyzed each of these data series to determine the cause of the behavior and then modified the forecasting technique or Expert Selection algorithm to detect these exceptions and respond appropriately.
As a result, the Forecast Pro SDK is far more than forecasting algorithms—it is a forecasting system that integrates a deep knowledge base and handles exceptions seamlessly to efficiently deliver robust, accurate forecasts where other forecasting systems frequently fail.
