Schools Interoperability Framework
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The Schools Interoperability Framework, Systems Interoperability Framework (UK), or SIF, is a data-sharing
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specification A specification often refers to a set of documented requirements to be satisfied by a material, design, product, or service. A specification is often a type of technical standard. There are different types of technical or engineering specificati ...
for academic institutions from kindergarten through workforce. This specification is being used primarily in the United States, Canada, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand; however, it is increasingly being implemented in India, and elsewhere. The specification comprises two parts: an
XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable. T ...
specification for
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educational data which is specific to the educational locale (such as North America, Australia or the UK), and a
service-oriented architecture In software engineering, service-oriented architecture (SOA) is an architectural style that focuses on discrete services instead of a monolithic design. By consequence, it is also applied in the field of software design where services are provide ...
(SOA) based on both direct and brokered RESTful-models for sharing that data between institutions, which is international and shared between the locales. SIF is not a product, but an industry initiative that enables diverse applications to interact and share data. , SIF was estimated to have been used in more than 48 US states and 6 countries, supporting five million students. The specification was started and maintained by its specification body, the
Schools Interoperability Framework Association The Access For Learning Community, or A4L, is a global, not-for-profit corporation committed to providing solutions in the education data space and supporting the use of standards by schools, districts, states, countries, and education vendors. It ...
, renamed the Access For Learning Community (A4L) in 2015.


History

Traditionally, the standalone applications used by public school districts have the limitation of data isolation; that is, it is difficult to access and share their data. This often results in redundant data entry,
data integrity Data integrity is the maintenance of, and the assurance of, data accuracy and consistency over its entire Information Lifecycle Management, life-cycle and is a critical aspect to the design, implementation, and usage of any system that stores, proc ...
problems, and inefficient or incomplete reporting. In such cases, a student's information can appear in multiple places but may not be identical, for example, or decision makers may be working with incomplete or inaccurate information. Many district and site technology coordinators also experience an increase in technical support problems from maintaining numerous proprietary systems. SIF was created to solve these issues. The Schools Interoperability Framework (SIF) began as an initiative chiefly championed initially by Microsoft to create "a blueprint for educational software interoperability and data access." It was designed to be an initiative drawing upon the strengths of the leading vendors in the K-12 market to enable schools' IT professionals to build, manage and upgrade their systems. It was endorsed by close to 20 leading K-12 vendors of student information, library, transportation, food service applications and more. The first pilot sites began in the summer of 1999, and the first SIF-based products began to show up in 2000. In the beginning it was not clear which approach would become the national standard in the
United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
. Both SIF and EDI were vying for the position in 2000 but SIF began taking the lead in 2002 or so. In 2000, the National School Boards Association held a panel discussion during its annual meeting on the topic of SIF. In 2007 in the United Kingdom
Becta Becta, originally known as the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency, was a non-departmental public body (popularly known as a Quango) funded by the Department for Education and its predecessor departments, in the United Kingd ...
has championed the adoption of SIF as a national standard for schools data interchange. In 2008 it was announced that in the UK the standard will become known as the "Systems Interoperability Framework". This reflects the intention in the UK to develop SIF to be used in other organizations beyond just schools.


Members

The SIF specification is supported by the A4L community. A4L members collaborate on a variety of technical solutions and standards which include but are not limited to the Schools Interoperability Framework. Members include districts, states, vendors, non-profits, and various government agencies.


Criticism

SIF has all the pains and challenges that come with any SOA specification and data model. When building specifications via consensus not everyone is always happy and sometimes the end product isn't perfect. Also given all the moving parts in modeling the entire K12's enterprise the specification has many points of possible failure. This is not particular to SIF but to any record-level, automated system moving standardized data from one source to another in a heterogeneous environment. Out-of-the-box interoperability and ease of use and implementation were part of a 12-18 month focus from 2007 and through 2009.


How SIF Works

SIF 2.x relied on using a broker called a Zone Integration Server (ZIS) to manage communication between applications. SIF 3.x and SIF 2.8+ allows for both brokered and direct communication between applications.


Brokered

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"— or ''Environment'' which is a logical grouping of applications in which software application agents communicate with each other through a central communication point. Zones are managed by an enterprise data broker sometimes called a Zone Integration Server (ZIS). A single ZIS can manage multiple Zones. However, the current infrastructure specification supports RESTful connections directly between applications AND/OR utilizing a brokered environment. Data travels between applications as a series of standardized messages, queries, and events written in XML or JSON and sent using
Internet protocols The Internet protocol suite, commonly known as TCP/IP, is a framework for organizing the set of communication protocols used in the Internet and similar computer networks according to functional criteria. The foundational protocols in the suit ...
. The SIF specification defines such events and the "choreography" that allows data to move back and forth between the applications.


Direct

Direct SIF allow one application to communicate directly to another via simple REST calls to PUT, POST, GET, or DELETE resources. This is ideal for simple environments with two or maybe three players where complex choreographies are not necessary. It is easier to implement than a brokered environment in two- or three-node situations.


Interface Code

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. In brokered environments, the broker keeps track of the Agents registered in the environment and its Zones and manages transactions between Agents, enabling them to provide data and respond to requests. The broker controls all access, routing, and security within the system. Standardization of the behavior of the Agents and the broker means that SIF can add standard functionality to a Zone by simply adding SIF-enabled applications over time.


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-level data warehouse may listen for changes in district-level data warehouses and update its database accordingly. Or a state entity 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 object, and the Data Warehouse object. A good example of this would be the Century Consultants SIS Agent working with the Pearson SLF Agent sending student data to the State Agency and getting Student Testing Identifiers in return.


SIF in relation to other standards

SIF was designed before
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namespaces In computing, a namespace is a set of signs (''names'') that are used to identify and refer to objects of various kinds. A namespace ensures that all of a given set of objects have unique names so that they can be easily identified. Namespaces ...
, and web service standards were as mature as they are today. As a result, it has a robust SOA that is more vetted than the current SOAP specifications but does not use the SOAP or WS standards. The 2.0 SIF Web Services specification began the process of joining these two worlds, and the 3.0 Infrastructure specification completes the transformation to a SOA specification using modern tools. The 2.0 Web Services specification allows for more generalized XML messaging structures typically found in
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s that use the concept of an
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. Web service standards are also designed to support secure public interfaces and
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s can make the setup and configuration easier. The SIF 2.0 Web Services specification allows for the use of Web Services to communicate in and out of the Zone. The 3.0 Infrastructure allows any data payload to be moved across it and is designed around RESTful design patterns. It allows both brokered and direct exchanges in a RESTful manner utilizing either XML or JSON payloads.


CEDS

Starting with SIF 3.0 the SIF Specification relies entirely-unless impossible or not practical- on the Common Education Data Standards CEDS for its controlled vocabulary and element definition. This allows it to transport CEDS over the wire and be compatible with other CEDS-compliant data sets.


LISS (Australia)

A similar standard LISS supports vendor integration 'within' a school site. This overcomes some limitations where a school has elected to use a Zone integration server (not a requirement in SIF 3.x implementations) LISS Lightweight Interoperability Standard for Schools connects primarily smaller, 'local' modules, such as timetabling, roll call, reporting or others, to the main admin system on a given school site. LISS works either across the web, or via a local network, and has a simpler format.


Other Standards

SIFA is also working closely with the Postsecondary Electronic Standards Council (
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),
SCORM Shareable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) is a collection of standards and specifications for web-based electronic educational technology (also called e-learning). It defines communications between client side content and a host system (cal ...
, and other standards organizations.


Versions

In August 2013 the SIF Association announced the release of the SIF Implementation Specification 3.0. The SIF Implementation Specification (North America) 3.0 is made up of a globally utilized reference infrastructure and North America data model focusing on supporting the Common Education Data Standards (CEDS) initiative. The new 3.0 infrastructure allows the transport of various data models including those from the other global SIF communities as well as data from the numerous “alphabet soup” data initiatives that are populating the education landscape. In essence – education now can utilize “one wire with one plug” – not the never-ending proprietary API’s and “one off” connections. The specification fully supports RESTful Web Services and SOAP-based protocols. The Australian 3.4 Data Model specification had come out in Fall of 2016, as well as a 3.1.2 release of the Global SIF Infrastructure. The version 2.8 specification is the last 2.x version of SIF. Most of the SIF implementations in the United States and abroad are 2.x deployments. The A4L Community has just released a new version of the SIF Specification called "Unity" that will use the best objects from the 3.x specification and the foundation of the 2.8 specification, and be able to run on either the 3.x infrastructure or the 2.x infrastructure. This is a boon to the thousands of districts and many states using the SIF 2 infrastructure and allows a clean migration path to utilizing more modern RestFUL architectures if desired.


SIF Express

The SIF 3.2 Release includes the SIF XPress Roster and the SIF Xpress Student Record Exchange (SRE). These are the result of work being done by various members of the association (vendors, agencies, regional centers) on a more easily adopted, easier to implement sub-set of the specification that handles the roster and basic uses cases.


Privacy

The Access for Learning community has recently started taking strong leadership in the education Privacy space globally. The association has created and supports an organization called the Student Data Privacy Consortium, or SDPC. and working closely with national Australian privacy efforts


See also

* Access For Learning Community *
Enterprise application integration Enterprise application integration (EAI) is the use of software and computer systems' architectural principles to integrate a set of enterprise computer applications. Overview Enterprise application integration is an integration framework comp ...
*
Machine-readable_document A machine-readable document is a document whose content can be readily processed by computers. Such documents are distinguished from machine-readable data by virtue of having sufficient structure to provide the necessary context to support the bu ...
*
Open Knowledge Initiative The Open Knowledge Initiative (OKI) is an organization responsible for the specification of software interfaces comprising a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) based on high level service definitions. The OKI specifically focuses on education ...
*
SCORM Shareable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) is a collection of standards and specifications for web-based electronic educational technology (also called e-learning). It defines communications between client side content and a host system (cal ...
* Standard data model *
Shibboleth (Internet2) Shibboleth is a single sign-on log-in system for computer networks and the Internet. It allows people to sign in using just one identity to various systems run by federations of different organizations or institutions. The federations are often un ...
* Web services


References

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External links


Official website of the Access For Learning (A4L) community
Educational technology standards Interoperability