It is important to contextualize solutions in terms of the needs, perceived and real, of the community they serve. In K-12 (the market I know best) there is a need for local control of where data resides, which applications own which data and which are subscribers, and the ability to monitor and control data that is reported outside the originating institution. While we need to make sure that we provide an architecture that represents the best technical solution we also need to make sure that we address potential social and political barriers to implementing interoperability.

Another example is the differences between K12 and Higher Ed. While many initiatives focus on K-20, the business cases and practices between these two markets vary considerably. The search for the ideal, common data model, while laudable, is not practical given the traditional differences between these two types of educational institutions. Creating a single data model that represents both may work for neither today. Mapping between the two related data models and continuing to find ways to bring them together as how and where formal education takes place will get us to a consolidated model while addressing the needs of these communities in the immediate future.

glad you liked the post. Thanks for the update on SIF web services. I knew they were being planned but not the details of what or when.

I like the idea of extending rather than replacing the existing transport (thus giving deployments a choice of which flavour of web infrastructure they use).

It is a pity that IMS aren’t attending the “web service harmonization meeting”. Their staff have experience in the area and would be able to make useful contributions.

Great post! One additional piece of information I wanted to add was that the comparison of SIF and LIS changes somewhat with the “web service enabled” SIF Release scheduled for Q2 2010.

The ZIS functionality (content based routing, pub/sub, guaranteed delivery etc.) will be encapsulated behind a set of Port Types in the WSDL for the SIF Infrastructure Web Service (SIWS), and SOAP will be added as a 2nd reference transport.

The net effect is that once such a “web enabled ZIS” is installed, it suddenly becomes possible to write a SIF application as a “pure” web application accessing the SIF web service over SOAP, and have it seamlessly interoperate with every existing SIF application already deployed in the Zone. Web Services aren’t a replacement for what we have – they will be an extension to it.

Being relatively late to the Web Service space, we are trying to align ourselves with the normative web service dependencies adopted by other educational standards. There is a “web service harmonization meeting” being held next week in Orlando Florida the day after the IMS meeting, sponsored by ADL (the SCORM folks) and including the PESC, SIF, and LETSI standards among others to address exactly this issue – an attempt to bring the industry closer to an “Education Web Service Dial Tone”. IMS was invited but unfortunately chose not to attend.

It will be extremely interesting to see what comes out of this – the hope is that we will be a step closer to knocking away one of the two LIS / SIF differences flagged in your summary:

“The differences lie in the underlying web technologies they use and the sectors they (originally) focused on”

If so, the industry (and those vendors who may find it necessary to support multiple educational standards)stand to benefit.