the e-framework: achieving critical mass for effective collaboration scott wilson 21-11-2005
TRANSCRIPT
The e-Framework:achieving critical mass for
effective collaboration
Scott Wilson21-11-2005
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareALike license. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 559 Nathan Abbot Way, Stanford, California 94305, USA
Who am I?
Assistant Director, CETIS
http://www.cetis.ac.uk/members/scott
Beklager, jeg snakker ikke norsk!Tyvärr talar jag inte svenska!
What this talk is about
• The e-Framework• Where it came from• What it is• Where its going
Players in the story
• JISC– CETIS– UKOLN
• DEST, Industry Canada, SURF• IMS• MIT OKI
How did it all begin?• We (JISC) noticed something wasn’t
working with our public-funded development work
• We wondered how we could fix it, and make it better, and came up with some ideas
• We realized we weren’t alone in this, and started talking to people in other countries
Public-funded open source projects have a
sustainability problem. Why?
• Insufficient incentives to continue building on prior work
• projects have time-bounded funding• projects are conceived in an
isolated fashion• Lack of transferability causes an
accountability issue
Why do we use frameworks?
• Rapid development, with room to innovate/focus on new functionality
• Examples: Eclipse, Zope, Mozilla/XUL, Spring, Rails…
• The e-Framework is a bit more abstract, but shares similar principles
… but more importantly
• they pull together a diverse group of developers who might otherwise work in isolation,
• enable small groups of developers to build something together far broader in scope than any single group could, and
• foster a sense of community and facilitate shared understanding
The E-F: Dynamic tensions
• innovation is promoted, but placed within a paradigm that provides context
• Solutions can be radically different, but they must remain mutually comprehensible
What does the framework contain?
• Service definitions and specifications• Reference models• A community of developers and
researchers• A referenced set of artifacts - SDKs
and libraries, tools, exemplars and case studies but not systems and solutions
Development approach
• Provide libraries (not complete applications) to support deployment of services and service consumers
• Support development of both commercial and open-source applications (e.g. Moodle, Sakai, Boddington, WebCT, BB…)
• Support deployment of service-oriented architectures within education
• Aim to demonstrate practical web service architecture
Services and Models
• Services describe discrete functional relationships between agents and reference standards that can be used to realize them
• Reference Models describe patterns for connecting services and agents in common situations
Models in the e-Framework
• OAIS (Repository management)• FREMA (Assessment)• PLE (Personal Learning)• LADIE (Learning activities)• COVARM (Course validation business
processes)
Etc.
Models [1]
Models [2]
E-Framework in OSI terms…
E-Framework in OSI terms…
Service Orientation
• While each of the models in the framework are different, they are all intended to be decomposable in a service-oriented manner
• Service orientation is the e-Framework paradigm
Technical approach
• Pragmatic web services– ReST, SOAP, RDF are all considered viable
service technologies, and promoted where appropriate
– Initially concentrated on SOAP, but…
• Developing libraries and SDKs to accelerate service uptake
• Support flexible deployment/architecture
Enterprise view
Regional view
Personal view
Adapters
Adapters
Q: Is the e-Framework a model-driven architecture?
Collaboration approach
• Funding development and demonstration projects
• Promoting community• Promoting reuse of prior
development outcomes• International context: Australia, UK
and others (NZ, Netherlands, Canada…)
Collaboration
• Establishing a governance model across different government departments in different countries took a lot of work
• There was a lot of skepticism, and it needed a lot of explanation of what we were trying to achieve
• Some people still think we’re building an Open Source LMS :-)
Concepts
• Getting everyone to agree the core concepts such as “service”, “model”, and “framework” took a long time
• We’re still encountering terminology difficulties
• … but at least we have a place where we can go to try and overcome them
E-F as political instrument
• Partners have found one of the main uses of the framework is non-technical
• By setting out a “map” of the space it becomes easier to spot gaps, overlaps and issues in the development programme
• Having e-learning, e-science, information services, admin show as a single entity can be very useful
Promoting active reuse
• To ensure the artifacts developed for the framework have greater sustainability, JISC actively promotes the demonstration and further development of previous OSS projects
• Only with an active user community and developer community can OSS thrive
Where is the framework?
• Its connecting various systems together in colleges and universities
• Its weaving together parts of regional federations
• It’s a mostly invisible (to end users) set of service components, libraries, and architectural models
• So its not an easy thing to market!
Examples
• Rostering: IMS-ES SDK/SWEET.net, BEWT…
• Timetables: BERT…• Assessment and item banks: APIS, ASSIS,
PyAssess, SPAID…• Workflow: ISIS, SLeD…• Resource discovery: D+, MDC…
• Integrated into Boddington, Moodle, WebCT, Blackboard, uPortal… (and Sakai?)
Synergy
(APIS + ISIS = ASSIS) + JPLAG = ASAPASAP + uPortal = RoboProf (Dublin)APIS + Moodle = Serving Maths (York)(COPPERCORE +SLED + APIS = SLED2 +
IMS-ES) > Liverpool Hope
Q: Why didn’t we use this resource to build one
great big Open-Source LMS for everyone?
Success Factors
• based on practical experience• evolve in response to experiences
and reflection• support partial implementation • Doesn’t mandate a single
development environment• Support a wide range of
implementation patterns
Next steps
• Widening the agenda: e-Science, information environment, e-Admin/Management information
• Working with the commercial sector• Broadening the stakeholders - more
countries, organisations, agencies• Doing a proper job of dissemination
