Linking research & learning technologies through standards1

Lyle Wintonlylejw AT unimelb.edu.au

Linking research & learning technologies through standards

What is Link Affiliates?

Brands the DEST developed (now DEEWR lead) technical standards and interoperability capability

LINK: what we do - linking people, projects, technologies

AFFILIATES: the way we work - our team, our clients, our partners, other projects, standards organisations …

Distributed Team – based at USQ, partnerships with Melbourne, Monash

Linking research & learning technologies through standards

What is Link Affiliates?

Agenda: strategic and effective use of IT through promoting/enabling

– Standards– Community Practice (cross sectoral)– Enabling Shared Infrastructure

Principles:

– Cross sectoral expertise and knowledge transfer– Australian Capability – maintaining, supporting and

providing opportunities to ~– Standards bringing people together

Linking research & learning technologies through standards

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What is the e-Framework?

(view from 40,000 ft)

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What is it?

Background

– Enabling meaningful conversations & collaboration across boundaries

– DEST / JISC e-Framework for Education and Research

– Now DEEWR (Australia), JISC (UK), MoE (NZ), SURF (NL)

– e-Framework is a tool used by Link Affiliates to model, build and communicate our outputs

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“Sharing service-oriented approaches to interoperability”

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What is it?

Goal:– technical interoperability– in education and research– by improving

• strategic planning• implementation processes

Principles:– service oriented approach (soa)– open standards– community involvement– incremental development

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Service oriented approach (soa)

Traditional approach– spec -> buy/build -> test -> deploy -> hope for no change– Large scale project implementation

Service Orientation approach (little “soa”)

– is a business oriented approach

– applying Services to meet Business Needs

• (our “business” is research and education)

– designing systems for change and reuse• build services for integration, interoperability, and loose

coupling

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Interoperability?

Interoperable Development (Standards and Services)

– Standards encourage Interoperability &Service encourage Integration

– But Standards and Services are not enough!

– Addresses interoperability at the pain points

• At the business policy/process level

• At an application and implementation level

• At the service-oriented level (service interfaces and contracts)

• At the semantic level

• In a specific context

Diagram courtesy of Peter Croger

Interoperability requires Compatibility

(AICTEC - Interoperability Standards Report)

BusinessProcesses

InformationResources

ApplicationSystems

TechnicalInfrastructure

OrganisationalPolicies

ORGANISATION B

BusinessProcesses

InformationResources

ApplicationSystems

TechnicalInfrastructure

OrganisationalPolicies

ORGANISATION A Collaboration

Compatibility

Compatibility

Compatibility

Compatibility

Compatibility• Certain amount of Compatibility required• How much standardisation?• At what levels?• What are the pain points?

e-Framework Components

A Service Usage Model (SUM) describes how the various Service (Expression or Genres) and data sources are organised

Service Genres are technology-neutral abstract capabilities, bound to specific technologies by Service Expressions.

Expression can have more than one Service Implementations and are deployed as Service Instances.

Service Genre Service Genre

ServiceExpression

ServiceExpression

ServiceExpression

ServiceImplementation

ServiceImplementation

ServiceInstance

ServiceInstance

Standards

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What can it do? Summary

In summary, we provide to the community…

– Consistent documentation

– Catalogue of technologies & standards

– Tool for communities to make informed choices

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What can it do? Summary

But the e-Framework

–is not intended to be prescriptive

–is not meant to be implemented all at once

–is not an architecture

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The e-Framework at work

(view from the ground)

Linking research & learning technologies through standards

What do we actually do?The e-Framework outputs … a knowledge base …

Describing interfaces between applications• technology independent genres, technology dependent expressions, descriptions of standards

Service Usage Models• service oriented blueprints• how to combine services to meet business requirements• reusable patterns, good practice, capability/service maps

Collaboration framework• common vocabulary• templates for developing documentation• information on technologies, projects, practice

LORN (Learning Object Repository Network)

Harvest– OAI PMH (FRED)– OAI PMH + LOM +

Web services

Search– Service view of SR

W– SRW + LOM

Context set

Obtain– OpenURL (interfac

e)– OpenURL +

Handle (SUM)

Standards-based

Implementable– heavily profiled

LORN (Learning Object Repository Network)

PILINPersistent Identifier Linking Infrastructure

Technology-independent map of a complex space

– Developed in parallel with an identifier information model

Compare identifier implementations

– URLs– Purls– Handles– SRB GUIDs …

Implement an abstract identifier API?

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National Library Labs

http://ll02.nla.gov.au/

Linking research & learning technologies through standards

What’s happening

Constantly updating website:– http://www.e-framework.org/ – Knowledge base, Getting Started, Success Stories, Technical

Walkthrough

Lots of SUMs and Service Expressions in development– See the wiki (linked from website)– Contribution and community involvement through projects such as

MAMS, FRED, PILIN, ARCHER (locally) and overseas

Domain mapping of service architectures– Repositories (FRED/AU, US), Geospatial (UK lead), Libraries (NLA/AU,

US), Mapping Security (UK, AU, NZ), ePortfolio starting (AU, UK)– International collaboration happening around these

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SOA – What’s the big deal?

Linking research & learning technologies through standards

SOA adoption

What are your core/high-value service?

How are they governed and change?

How do I use them? (stakeholders, SLAs, contracts)

Where do I go to get the “big picture”?

ImpliesImpliesMatureMature

Start at the start…

Semantic ModelSemantic ModelData ModelData Model

Business ModelsBusiness Models

Service ModelsService Models

Create aCreate aGovernanceGovernanceFrameworkFramework

Linking research & learning technologies through standards

Recordkeeping?

Record– “Anything providing permanent evidence of or information about past events”

(dictionary def.)

Metadata– “Metadata is fundamentally about interoperability: how we work together. In

situations where metadata is useful we are effectively making the statement that the “data” itself is not enough, we need more information. Within the scope of data and interoperable the fundamental activities are communities (more than one person) sharing and discovering data. The greater the distance over which interoperability is required (eg. space, culture, time, scale of activity, organisation boundaries) the more important metadata becomes.”(my 2 cents)

e-Framework– Goal is interoperability– Facilitated by communication and standards– Consistent documentation across boundaries