External Interfaces/API

Using the MATLAB Engine

Some of the things you can do with the MATLAB engine are:

• Call a math routine, for example, to invert an array or to compute an FFT from your own program. When employed in this manner, MATLAB is a powerful and programmable mathematical subroutine library.
• Build an entire system for a specific task, for example, radar signature analysis or gas chromatography, where the front end (GUI) is programmed in C and the back end (analysis) is programmed in MATLAB, thereby shortening development time.

The MATLAB engine operates by running in the background as a separate process from your own program. This offers several advantages:

• On UNIX, the MATLAB engine can run on your machine, or on any other UNIX machine on your network, including machines of a different architecture. Thus you could implement a user interface on your workstation and perform the computations on a faster machine located elsewhere on your network. The description of the engOpen function offers further information.
• Instead of requiring that all of MATLAB be linked to your program (a substantial amount of code), only a small engine communication library is needed.

Calling MATLAB from C and Fortran Programs

The Engine Library