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