Service-oriented Symbolic Computing with SymGrid

Abstract

Recent software engineering concepts, like software as a service, allow the extension of the legacy code lifetime and the reduction of software maintenance costs. In particular, exposing computer algebra systems as services allows not only the integration in complex service-oriented architectures but also their further development. While existing standards may be used for service deployment, discovery and interaction, the particularities of services to be built require specialized solutions. A recent technical approach aimed at integrating legacy computer algebra systems into modern service-oriented architectures is presented and discussed in detail in this paper. A special emphasis is put on the ability to compose symbolic services in complex computing scenarios. A short description of how such systems were extended to allow the access of external services is provided as well. The proposed approach was implemented into a specific framework, namely, SymGrid-Services. Simple examples are provided to demonstrate usefulness of the framework.