  New generations of neutron scattering sources and instrumentation are
providing challenges in data handling for user software. Time-of-Flight
instruments used at pulsed sources typically produce hundreds or thousands of
channels of data for each detector segment. New instruments are being designed
with thousands to hundreds of thousands of detector segments. High intensity
neutron sources make possible parametric studies and texture studies which
further increase data handling requirements. The Integrated Spectral Analysis
Workbench (ISAW) software developed at Argonne handles large numbers of spectra
simultaneously while providing operations to reduce, sort, combine and export
the data. It includes viewers to inspect the data in detail in real time. ISAW
uses existing software components and packages where feasible and takes
advantage of the excellent support for user interface design and network
communication in Java. The included scripting language simplifies repetitive
operations for analyzing many files related to a given experiment. Recent
additions to ISAW include a contour view, a time-slice table view, routines for
finding and fitting peaks in data, and support for data from other facilities
using the NeXus format. In this paper, I give an overview of features and
planned improvements of ISAW. Details of some of the improvements are covered
in other presentations at this conference.
