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DAKOTA:
A Multilevel Parallel Object-Oriented Framework for Design Optimization,
Parameter Estimation, Uncertainty Quantification, and Sensitivity Analysis 

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					Sandia National Laboratories
Michael S. Eldred  (Project Lead)
Brian M. Adams     (Product Manager)                _/_/_/
Karen Haskell      (Support Manager)                 _/_/
James R. Stewart   (Dept Manager)               _/_/_/_/_/_/
William J. Bohnhoff                            _/  _/_/  _/
John P. Eddy                                  _/  _/_/  _/
David M. Gay			                _/_/_/
William E. Hart                     
Laura P. Swiler				P.O. Box 5800, Mail Stop 1318
Jean-Paul Watson			Albuquerque, NM 87185-1318

Patty D. Hough				P.O. Box 969, MS 9217
Tammy G. Kolda				Livermore, CA 94551-0969

Email: dakota-developers@development.sandia.gov

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License.

DAKOTA is distributed under the GNU General Public License.  It is free 
software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU 
General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either 
version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.  A copy of 
this license is included in the LICENSE file, and is also available online 
from http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html.  Also refer to the COPYRIGHT file 
for important U.S. Government legal notices.

The DAKOTA distribution contains libraries which are available separately
under compatible licensing terms.  In particular, many of the libraries
in methods and packages are available separately under the GNU General 
Public License (GPL) or Lesser General Public License (LGPL).

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Overview.

The DAKOTA (Design Analysis Kit for Optimization and Terascale Applications) 
toolkit provides a flexible, extensible interface between analysis codes and 
iteration methods. DAKOTA contains algorithms for optimization with gradient 
and nongradient-based methods; uncertainty quantification with sampling, 
reliability, polynomial chaos, and epistemic methods; parameter estimation 
with nonlinear least squares methods; and sensitivity/variance analysis with 
design of experiments and parameter study capabilities.  These capabilities 
may be used on their own or as components within advanced strategies such as 
surrogate-based optimization, mixed integer nonlinear programming, or 
optimization under uncertainty.

Refer to http://www.cs.sandia.gov/DAKOTA/software.html for additional 
information.

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Distribution.

The directories contained in this distribution include:

examples            Example problems from the Users Manual, examples of
		    interfacing with other codes using script-based or direct
		    linkage-based interfaces, parallel computing examples, and
		    platform installation examples.

methods             Libraries of iterative algorithms provided by commercial
                    vendors and related Sandia projects.

packages            Other libraries for parsing (idr), vector/matrix utilities
                    (epetra), statistics (GSL), graphics (PLplot, SciPlot),
                    surface fitting (Surfpack), etc.

m4                  m4 macros used for supporting autoconf.

docs                The Users, Reference, and Developers Manuals are 
                    maintained here.  Other references are available from
                    the DAKOTA Web site (http://www.cs.sandia.gov/DAKOTA).

src                 The main source code repository for the DAKOTA system.

test                Files for regression and unit testing of the DAKOTA system.
                    Test simulator programs and DAKOTA input files are
                    provided for testing different capabilities.

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Installation.

The installation procedure uses a standard GNU installation based on autoconf.
The basic steps are to invoke 'configure' to generate Makefiles for your 
particular system and then invoke 'make' to compile the sources.  See the 
INSTALL file for detailed instructions.

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Platforms.

This package is actively supported with nightly build and regression test 
verifications on the following platforms for the given operating systems, 
C++ compilers, and MPI libraries:

  PC        RHEL 4 Update 5          g++ v3.4.6           MPICH IP/GM/IB

  SUN       Solaris 2.10             CC v5.7              SUNWhpc

  IBM       AIX 5.2                  xlC v7.0             POE MPI

Ports to the following platforms are supported manually on an as-needed basis:

  PC        Windows (Cygwin 1.5.11)  g++ 3.3.3            MPICH

  Mac       OS X 10.3.5              g++ 3.3              MPICH

  Red Storm                          PGI                  Cray MPI

  PC        Linux                    Intel                OpenMPI, MVAPICH

Ports to the following platforms have been supported in the past although
they are no longer maintained:

  SGI       IRIX 6.5                 CC v7.4.2m           SGI MPI

  DEC       OSF 5.1                  cxx v6.3-002         Digital MPI

  HP        HP-UX 10.20              CC                   -

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Versions.

Versions of the DAKOTA software have been tagged as follows:

Version_4_2        11/05/08 (refer to svn externals for TPL tags)
Version_4_1         9/21/07 (refer to svn externals for TPL tags)
Version_4_0         5/12/06 (acro-coliny, opt++, DDace, and Surfpack tagged
                             Dakota_Version_4_0 4/28/06)
Version-3-3        12/23/04 (acro-pub-coliny tagged Dakota_Version_3_3 12/23/04)
Version-3-2         7/21/04 (acro-pub-coliny tagged Dakota_Version_3_2  7/21/04)
Version-3-1-2       7/09/03 (uses Dakota_Version_3_1 of sgopt/pico/utilib)
Version-3-1-1       5/21/03 (uses Dakota_Version_3_1 of sgopt/pico/utilib)
Version-3-1         4/04/03 (sgopt/pico/utilib tagged Dakota_Version_3_1
                             4/04/03)
Version-3-0         3/30/02 (sgopt/pico/utilib tagged Dakota_Version_3_0
                             3/30/02)
Version-3-0-beta   11/30/01 (sgopt/utilib tagged Dakota_Version_3_0_beta
                             11/30/01; pico: use cvs-p co -r osi -D 11/30/01)
Version-2-1-preansi 9/17/01 (last non-ANSI; same sgopt/utilib/pico as below)
Version-2-1         7/09/01 (sgopt/utilib/pico tagged Dakota_Version_2_1
                             6/22/01)
Version-2-0         3/14/00 (sgopt/utilib/pico tagged Dakota_Version_2_0 3/7/00)
Version-1-1         4/15/99
Version-1-0         2/18/99

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Contributing enhancements.

DAKOTA is both a research and a production code and is the subject of active
continuing development.  Bug reports, suggestions for improvement, and required 
changes for other platforms/compilers are welcome.  Direct messages to
dakota-developers@development.sandia.gov.

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