The Schools Interoperability Framework, Systems Interoperability Framework (UK), or SIF, is a data-sharing open specification 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 specification for modeling educational data which is specific to the educational locale (such as North America, Australia or the UK), and a service-oriented architecture (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. As of March 2007 [update] , SIF was estimated[ by whom? ] 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, renamed the Access For Learning Community (A4L) in 2015. [1]
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 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. [2]
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. [3]
In the beginning it was not clear which approach would become the national standard in the United States. 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 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.
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. [4]
Members include districts, states, vendors, non-profits, and various government agencies.
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.
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. [5]
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 SIF specification defines such events and the "choreography" that allows data to move back and forth between the applications. [6]
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.
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" 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 was designed before REST, SOAP, 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 enterprise messaging systems that use the concept of an enterprise service bus. Web service 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 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.
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. [7]
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 [8] 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.
SIFA is also working closely with the Postsecondary Electronic Standards Council (PESC), SCORM, and other standards organizations.
In August 2013 the SIF Association announced the release of the SIF Implementation Specification 3.0. [9] 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. [10] 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, [11] as well as a 3.1.2 release of the Global SIF Infrastructure. [12]
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. [13]
The A4L Community has just released a new version of the SIF Specification called "Unity" [14] 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. [15]
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. [16] [17]
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. [18] and working closely with national Australian privacy efforts [19]
Interoperability is a characteristic of a product or system to work with other products or systems. While the term was initially defined for information technology or systems engineering services to allow for information exchange, a broader definition takes into account social, political, and organizational factors that impact system-to-system performance.
Middleware in the context of distributed applications is software that provides services beyond those provided by the operating system to enable the various components of a distributed system to communicate and manage data. Middleware supports and simplifies complex distributed applications. It includes web servers, application servers, messaging and similar tools that support application development and delivery. Middleware is especially integral to modern information technology based on XML, SOAP, Web services, and service-oriented architecture.
A web service (WS) is either:
The Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards is a nonprofit consortium that works on the development, convergence, and adoption of open standards for cybersecurity, blockchain, Internet of things (IoT), emergency management, cloud computing, legal data exchange, energy, content technologies, and other areas.
A standard data model or industry standard data model (ISDM) is a data model that is widely applied in some industry, and shared amongst competitors to some degree. They are often defined by standards bodies, database vendors or operating system vendors.
The Advanced Authoring Format (AAF) is a file format for professional cross-platform data interchange, designed for the video post-production and authoring environment. It was created by the Advanced Media Workflow Association (AMWA), and is now being standardized through the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE).
Health Level Seven or HL7 refers to a set of international standards for transfer of clinical and administrative data between software applications used by various healthcare providers. These standards focus on the application layer, which is "layer 7" in the OSI model. The HL7 standards are produced by Health Level Seven International, an international standards organization, and are adopted by other standards issuing bodies such as American National Standards Institute and International Organization for Standardization.
Message-oriented middleware (MOM) is software or hardware infrastructure supporting sending and receiving messages between distributed systems. MOM allows application modules to be distributed over heterogeneous platforms and reduces the complexity of developing applications that span multiple operating systems and network protocols. The middleware creates a distributed communications layer that insulates the application developer from the details of the various operating systems and network interfaces. APIs that extend across diverse platforms and networks are typically provided by MOM.
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 provided to the other components by application components, through a communication protocol over a network. A service is a discrete unit of functionality that can be accessed remotely and acted upon and updated independently, such as retrieving a credit card statement online. SOA is also intended to be independent of vendors, products and technologies.
Enterprise application integration (EAI) is the use of software and computer systems' architectural principles to integrate a set of enterprise computer applications.
The Data Distribution Service (DDS) for real-time systems is an Object Management Group (OMG) machine-to-machine standard that aims to enable dependable, high-performance, interoperable, real-time, scalable data exchanges using a publish–subscribe pattern.
The Common Information Model (CIM) is an open standard that defines how managed elements in an IT environment are represented as a common set of objects and relationships between them.
OpenESB is a Java-based open-source enterprise service bus. It can be used as a platform for both enterprise application integration and service-oriented architecture. OpenESB allows developers to integrate legacy systems, external and internal partners and new development in business processes. It supports a multitude of integration technologies including standard JBI, XML with support for XML Schemas, WSDL, and BPEL with the aim of simplicity, efficiency, long-term durability, and low TCO.
Service-oriented architectures (SOA) are based on the notion of software services, which are high-level software components that include web services. Implementation of an SOA requires tools as well as run-time infrastructure software. This is collectively referred to as a service-oriented architecture implementation framework or (SOAIF). The SOAIF envisions a comprehensive framework that provides all the technology that an enterprise might need to build and run an SOA. An SOAIF includes both design-time and run-time capabilities as well as all the software functionality an enterprise needs to build and operate an SOA, including service-oriented:
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 has regional chapters in the US, UK, AU, and New Zealand.
The Spacecraft Monitoring & Control (SM&C) Working Group of the Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems (CCSDS), which sees the active participation of the main space agencies, is defining a service-oriented architecture consisting of a set of standard end-to-end services between functions resident on board a spacecraft or based on the ground, that are responsible for mission operations.
Service Component Architecture (SCA) is a software technology designed to provide a model for applications that follow service-oriented architecture principles. The technology, created by major software vendors, including IBM, Oracle Corporation and TIBCO Software, encompasses a wide range of technologies and as such is specified in independent specifications to maintain programming language and application environment neutrality. Many times it uses an enterprise service bus (ESB).
SOA Repository Artifact Model & Protocol (S-RAMP) is a specification of SOA repository released by HP, IBM, Software AG, TIBCO, and Red Hat. The SOA repository provides environments for designing, running and monitoring services. The repository manages artifacts like schemas, service descriptions, business process definitions and policies. The SOA Repository Artifact Model and Protocol (S-RAMP) defines a common data model for SOA repositories as well as an interaction protocol to facilitate the use of common tooling and sharing of data. This ATOM binding specifications documents the syntax for interaction with a compliant repository for create, read, update, delete and query operations. The S-RAMP specification promotes interoperability of SOA Repositories. The S-RAMP specification is one of the SOA standards.
Cloud Infrastructure Management Interface (CIMI) is an open standard API specification for managing cloud infrastructure.