March 2008 — Features
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Mix Master
The world is choking on data, says Gartner analyst Janelle Hill. Her firm reports that a typical enterprise stored 10 times more data in 2007 than it did in 2000. A lot of that data is simply trapped in the systems that created it. Data integration connects these burgeoning islands of information. According to Hill, the process involves extracting data from a source-usually a database, but it could be files, web services, and even emails- transforming it with "joins," "lookups," or calculations, and then loading the transformed data onto target systems.
Interoperability:
The ability of two or more systems to exchange information and to use the information that has been exchanged.
Two main components make up the SIF architecture: software servers called Zone Integration Servers, and message gateways called agents. The servers provide messaging among the agents within a network known as a zone. A zone could comprise a single school building, a group of schools, an entire district, and even an entire state. Essentially, a Zone Integration Server is the message bus, whose primary job is to guarantee delivery of messages. It also provides a channel for transport and access control to data. Agents are extensions of the individual applications that serve as intermediaries between the applications and the Zone Integration Servers. Agents move messages to and from the message queue, translate between the SIF data model and an application's native data model, and then express that translation in XML as SIF Data Objects. In other words, the Zone Integration Servers act as the data integration brokers among applications that support the SIF spec.
"It's about comparing apples to apples," says Larry Fruth, executive director of the Schools Interoperability Framework Association (SIFA). "It's about getting everyone not so much on the same page as access to it."
Fruth's organization is the nonprofit, independent standards body that advocates for, and maintains, the SIF spec. SIFA emerged from a project launched in 1997 under the auspices of the Washington, DC-based Software & Information Industry Association. The spec's first big backer was Microsoft, which today describes SIF as "an industry-supported technical blueprint for K-12 software." Today, SIFA boasts a membership exceeding 1,100, Fruth says. Though it started as a vendor-dominated organization, 75 to 80 percent of its members are now end users. The group's membership roster includes schools, states, K-12 software vendors, systems integrators, and others interested in helping advance interoperability in the K-12 space.
"As schools utilize technology more comprehensively for teaching, learning, and administration, the need for this kind of interoperability becomes paramount," Fruth explains. "With the increased accountability and expectations in schools today, linking accurate, interoperable educational data to the right learning resources for individuals is the holy grail for using technology for real and measured improvements in learning."
