BNet.News
In This Issue: November/December 2005 
•   Charles River Analytics at Third Bayesian Modeling Applications Workshop
•   BNet.Builder User Tip: Node Description
•   BNet.EngineKit User Tip: Node Description
•   Upcoming ICEIS 2006 Conference
•   Publicize Your Belief Network Success Story
Charles River Analytics at Third Bayesian Modeling Applications Workshop
Charles River Analytics' employees attended the Third Bayesian Modeling Applications Workshop in Edinburgh, Scotland. The workshop was part of the 21st Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence (UAI 2005) that took place from July 26-29, 2005. Charles River Analytics, Inc. was a sponsor of UAI 2005 and presented BNet™.Builder at the conference.

The Bayesian Modeling Applications Workshop facilitates the exchange of information on Bayesian methods, specifically focusing on a particular area. This year's theme was on patterns for reuse, especially in regards to design patterns.

Sessions in this year's workshop took place in the following categories:

  • Basics of Model Building
  • Model Building Blocks
  • Patterns for Using Models
  • Applications and Limitations of Models

For more information on the workshop or sessions, click here.

Upcoming ICEIS 2006 Conference
The 8th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems will take place from May 23-27, 2006, in Paphos, Cyprus. The conference focuses on real world applications in information systems.

Bayesian networks is a subtopic in Area 2 of the conference, Artificial Intelligence and Decision Support Systems.

For more information on the conference, click here.

BNet.Builder User Tip: Node Description
The Node Properties window in BNet.Builder allows you to provide a textual description for a node. The node description can include an unlimited length of text for you to provide information to describe your node.

To view or edit a node's description:

  1. Open the Node Properties window. You can do this in one of three ways:

    • Select the Node Properties item from the Window menu.
    • Right-click a node and selecting the Node
      Properties item.
    • Use the Ctrl+3 keyboard shortcut.

  2. When the Node Properties window opens, click the Description tab at the bottom of the window.
  3. Type text in the white box in the Description tab.

    The node description will be saved to the file so you'll be able to reuse it at another time.

BNet.EngineKit User Tip: Node Description
You can use the BNet.EngineKit API to set a node's description as a String object. Follow the example shown in this code sample in order to change the description:


DiscreteNode node = ...;
String oldDescription = node.getDescription();
String newDescription = "This is the new description for the node";
node.setDescription(newDescription);


Note: You can also register your own implementation of the NodeListener interface with a node. Its descriptionChanged method will be called whenever the node's description is changed.

Publicize Your Belief Network Success Story
Want to show off your applications of belief networks to others using them in their research? Send us your success stories. We would like to include at least one in each edition of BNet.News.

To send us your story, please contact lcordeiro@cra.com or zcox@cra.com.

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