What is new in CoCoALib and CoCoA-5?

CoCoA is a well-established Computer Algebra System for Computations in Commutative Algebra, and specifically for Gröbner bases. In the last few years the CoCoA software has undergone a profound change: the code has been totally re-written in C++, and includes CoCoA-5 (an interactive system) and CoCoALib (an open source C++ library). The new CoCoA-5 language resembles the old CoCoA-4 language, but has clearly defined semantics, making it both more robust and more flexible than CoCoA-4. CoCoALib is the mathematical core; its design focusses on ease of use so that other software can readily use it as a library for multivariate polynomial computations and other Commutative Algebra operations. The internal design of the software makes it easy to integrate other libraries and to render all CoCoALib extensions accessible via the interactive CoCoA-5 system.