Title:        Connecting External Engines through OMEI: Open
                Mathematical Engine Interface
  Authors:      Weidong LIAO, Dongdai LIN, Paul S. Wang
  Affiliation:  Institute of Computational Mathematics,
                Dept. of Computer Science, Kent State University
  Abstract:
Open Mathematical Engine Interface (OMEI) is an application programming
interface specification for providing computational services through external
engine for compute servers.  The background and use scenarios of OMEI, the OMEI
specification and its implementation in Java environment are discussed.

The Internet has been a platform for a variety of services for more than one
decade, but the deployment of mathematical services over the Internet has
relatively lagged behind.  Cooperating with other institutions worldwide, the
Institute of Computational Mathematical at Kent State University initiated an
IAMC project to provide an infrastructure and framework for bringing
mathematical computational and educational services over the Internet.

The IAMC infrastructure includes a layered protocol model for connecting IAMC
client and server effectively and efficiently over the Internet environment, an
external engine interface (EEI) for binding external compute engines to the
IAMC server to provide real computational services, and a software framework
for facilitating the development of IAMC systems.  The OMEI is an example of
EEI; it is a programming interface that intends to standardize the access
pattern to external compute engines.

In this paper we concentrate on OMEI.  First we introduce the background and
motivation behind OMEI.  Then several use scenarios of OMEI specification will
be described; we can see that OMEI cannot only be used with compute servers,
but also the regular front-ends.  The OMEI specification and OMEI
implementation in Java environment will be also discussed.  Finally we provide
some conclusions and our plans about OMEI.