Reports from R. Fourer and Co-Researchers Add New Data to Research in Operations Science.(Report)

"We describe a research project to design a distributed optimization environment in which solvers, modeling languages, registries, analyzers, and simulation engines can be implemented as services and utilities under a unified framework," investigators in the United States report.

"Our work, which we call optimization services or OS, defines standards for all activities necessary to support decentralized optimization on the Internet: representation of optimization instances, results, and solver options; communication between clients and solvers; and discovery and registration of optimization-related software using the concept of Web services. In this paper we place emphasis on issues in distributed computing that are posed by the special character of optimization," wrote R. Fourer and colleagues.

The researchers concluded: "We also describe a reference implementation that is freely available as an open-source project of COIN-OR."

Fourer and colleagues published their study in Operations Research (Optimization Services: A Framework for Distributed Optimization. Operations Research, 2010;58(6):1624-1636).

For additional information, contact R. Fourer, Northwestern University, Dept. of Ind Engineering & Management Science, Evanston, IL 60208, USA.

The publisher of the journal Operations Research can be contacted at: Informs, 7240 Parkway Dr., Ste. 310, Hanover, MD 21076-1344, USA.

Keywords: City:Evanston, State:IL, Country:United States, Operations Science, Software

This article was prepared by Computer Weekly News editors from staff and other reports. Copyright 2011, Computer Weekly News via VerticalNews.com.