PV-WAVE (Precision Visuals - Workstation Analysis and Visualization Environment) is an array oriented fourth-generation programming language used by engineers, scientists, researchers, business analysts and software developers to build and deploy visual data analysis applications.
[1] PV-WAVE was originally developed by a company called Precision Visuals, based in Boulder, CO.
The shared history of PV-WAVE and IDL began in 1988, when Precision Visuals entered into an agreement with Research Systems, Incorporated (RSI, the original developer of IDL) under which Precision Visuals resold IDL under the name PV-WAVE.
In September 1990, Precision Visuals exercised an option in its agreement with RSI to purchase a copy of the IDL source code.
[citation needed] In May 2009, Visual Numerics was acquired by Rogue Wave Software.