[om] Re: OM-services

[Richard Fateman]

Andrew Solomon wrote:
> 
<snip>
> is whether it is possible to specify the functionality of a service closely enough that
> the specification can be understood by another program which can decide if it will do
> the calculation it desires. 

I would only add that the OM idea seems to be that this description
 should be written by some committee generally not including the 
person or persons who wrote the program.

>Perhaps where this is heading is that we are defining a class
> of services which can be specified in a machine readable format.

A prototype already exists in the form of a subroutine library. 
The specification, documentation, and sometimes the source code
are all machine readable for (say) LAPACK.
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