Schools Interoperability Framework

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This article describes the Schools Interoperability Framework or "SIF" specification. It is the US national kindergarten through 12th grade (K12) specification for modeling educational data and information in an XML format, and a specification for sharing that information between software applications in the educational space.

Together these two aspects of the specification allow interoperability of heteregenous software applications. It addresses infrastructure issues (how do systems communicate), data issues (how do you describe the data), and choreography (how does the data move around).

SIF is:

  • Industry Initiative
  • Open specification for K-12 instructional and administrative software
  • Not a product
  • Enables diverse applications to interact and share data seamlessly
  • Current Estimates of SIF Deployments (February 2005) have deployments in 40+ States, 600+ Districts, and 4 million students.

Contents

[edit] Problem Being Solved

Public school districts in the United States -- and similar organizations in Australia and Europe -- utilize SIF to solve problems of stove-pipe applications and of application data isolation:

  • redundant data entry
  • disconnected applications increasing support costs
  • costly and inefficient data reporting is
  • data inaccessible to decision-makers

Lack of interoperability also causes difficult purchase decisions for district and site technology co-ordinators who procure administrative and management applications. Many co-ordinators experience an increase in technical support problems from maintaining numerous proprietary systems. Do they invest more money in their aging, installed-base systems? Or invest in newer, more efficient systems?

[edit] SIFA Operational Structures

The Schools Interoperability Framework Association (SIFA) is a non-profit consortium of educators, local education agency personnel, state education agency personnel, federal education personnel and vendors who make or support educational instructive and administrative applications.

SIFA is composed of several SIFA Working Groups and SIFA Task Forces. Work groups tend to represent business verticals in the k12 space and thus persistent categories. Task forces are oriented towards a particular topic and have a lifecycle.

The areas covered are:

  • Assessments
  • Data Warehouse
  • Human Resources & Financials
  • Food Services
  • Instructional Services
  • Library Automation
  • Student Information
  • Transportation and Geographic Information Systems
  • Data Model
  • Vertical Reporting
  • Web Services Interoperability

[edit] Advantages of SIF

There are many advantages to SIF:

  • SIF is one of the few XML standards that exists today built entirely and specificially for the exchange of k12 Education-related information.
  • Case studies show a SIGNIFICANT dollar savings for schools and districts
  • Many school districts and, lately, more and more whole states are requiring (even with legislation) that k12 data vendors use SIF.
  • Many vendors in the k12 space already have SIF Agents and are capable of interacting with a SIF Zone, thus making interoperability much cheaper since you don't to build connectors or agents for all or even most of your applications.

[edit] How it works

Rather than have each application vendor try to set up a separate connection to every other application, SIF has defined the set of rules and definitions to share data within a SIF Zone -- a logical grouping of applications in which software application agents communicate with each other through a central communication point. Zones are managed by a piece of software called a Zone Integration Server (ZIS). A single ZIS can manage multiple Zones.

Data travels between applications as a series of standardized messages, queries and events written in XML and sent using Internet protocols. The SIF Specification defines such events and the choreography that allows data to move back and forth between the applications.

SIF Agents are pieces of software that exist either internal to an application or installed next to it. The SIF Agents function as extensions of each application and serve as the intermediary between the software application and the SIF Zone. The ZIS keeps track of the Agents registered in the Zone and manages transactions between Agents, enabling them to provide data and respond to requests. The ZIS controls all access, routing and security within the system. Standardization of the behavior of the Agents and ZIS means that SIF can add standard functionality to a Zone by simply adding SIF-enabled applications over time.

[edit] Vertical interoperability

"Vertical interoperability" is a situation in which SIF agents at different levels of an organization communicate using a SIF Zone. Vertical interoperability involves data collection from multiple agents (upward) or publishing of information to multiple agents (downward). For example, a state department data warehouse may listen for changes in district level data warehouses and update its database on a regular basis. Or a state department may wish to publish teacher certification data to districts. The three pieces of the SIF specification that deal directly with Vertical Interoperability are the Student Locator object, the Vertical Reporting Objects, and the Data Warehouse objects.

[edit] Limitations of SIF 1.5

SIF was designed before XML and web service standards were as mature as they are today. Future versions of SIF may integrate more standards and multiple namespaces.

[edit] SIF version 2.0 out in November 2006

The version 2.0 specification has been released. It is expected that one will start seeing 2.0 application environments arising in the next 6-12 months as vendors start designing, developing, and implementing 2.0 agents and states, districts and schools start adopting them. Most of the SIF ZOne Integration Server vendors are already or will be putting 1.5r1 to 2.0 migration functionality in place for their clients.

[edit] Web Service Interoperability Issues

Although SIF was developed before web services became a popular standard, SIF version 2.0 integrates web services features. Web services allow for more generalized XML messaging structures typically found in an Enterprise messaging system that use the concept of an Enterprise service bus. Web services standards are also designed to support secure-public interfaces and XML appliances can make the setup and configuration easier. The SIF 2.0 Web Services specification allows for the use of Web Services to ocmmunicate in and out of the Zone.

[edit] History

Founded in 1997 by vendors under the auspices of the Software Information Industry Association (SIIA), SIFA has evolved into a non-profit consortium of the federal Department of Education, states, education software companies, state education agencies and school districts. The European Union and Australia have started to support the SIF framework. There is also starting to be adoption of the specification in the higher education space.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

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