The S.A.G.E. (Statistical Analysis for Genetic Epidemiology) computer program package provides researchers with the tools necessary for various types of statistical genetic analysis of human family data. Prior to the funding of this resource, few such computer programs were available, and those in existence were usually poorly documented and not easily transportable from one type of computer to another. This subproject has addressed these problems by developing computer programs for genetic analysis that are well documented, and that are written in ANSI standard FORTRAN 77 for easy portability between different computers and operating systems. This approach was chosen, rather than writing a different version of the programs for each possible combination of computer and operating system, because it is less expensive to write and maintain a single version of each program than to maintain multiple versions. ANSI standard FORTRAN 77 was chosen because at the time of initial funding of this resource it was the only language available with standards that were widely implemented in compilers used by the genetics community. We released Version 2.2 of this program package in June, 1994. We are currently in the design stages of a new version of the programs that will be written in C++, a structured computer programming language that at present has several advantages over FORTRAN. We are also implementing new theoretical developments into the analysis programs, paying particular attention to including methods of analysis that are requested by our users and collaborators.
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