This is my blog about the Schools Interoperability Framework. The opinions expressed here may not be the official view of SIFA, its members, nor my employer.
Sunday, May 18, 2008
When Good XML Goes Bad
XML.com recently published an article titled "Bad XML." It is a good read for those of you that are interested in markup design. In SIF I think we do a fairly good job of not creating "Bad XML," but there is definitely room for improvement. Here is the link to the article.
The Schools Interoperability Framework is a set of software and data specifications that describe how data can be exchanged among applications in a K12 schools setting. The SIF Association, a not-for-profit 503c corporation, produces the specifications and coordinates the work of members. Members in the association devote time and talent to collaboratively develop the various specifications that make up the framework. Member organizations include schools, states, K12 software vendors, systems integrators, and others interested in helping advance interoperability in the K12 space. The association does not produce a "SIF" product. Components of the framework, like Zone Integration Servers and Agents, are developed and offered by vendor members of the association and extended community. The main software components of the architecture today are Zone Integration Servers (ZIS) and Agents. ZIS's provide reliable messaging among Agents within a logical collection of systems known as a Zone. A ZIS is generally implemented as a software server. Agents are responsible for interfacing applications to Zones. Agents allow software applications to send and receive data from zones using HTTP/S transport using the SIF data model, which is expressed in XML.
I work for a company that is an independent integrator in the SIF space. We also develop SIF Agents and other tools and products around SIF. I'm a member of the SIFA Technical Board and have been actively involved in the association for about a year now. As a company, we've been working with SIF since about 2001.
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