Education Management Systems is First SIF 2 Certified Food Services System

The following announcement went out to the SIF Association today. Congratulations to our good partner, EMS, on the first SIF 2 Certified Food Services Application!

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* SIF CERTIFICATION PROGRAM
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The Open Group is pleased to announce that the following product has recently been registered as conforming to the SIF 2 Enabled Application Product Standard:

* Education Management Systems, Inc - Meals Plus 8.0 and above withMealsPlusAgent 1.0

To view all current SIF certifications and Conformance Statements, please see the SIF Certification Register at http://certification.sifinfo.org/register.html


For more information on the SIF Certification Program, please refer to: http://certification.sifinfo.org/

SIFA Members Journey to Bloomington

SIF Association Members traveled in from far and wide to Bloomington, IL for the developer's camp this week. We helped SIFA entertain friends from Sacramento, Vancouver, Boston, Baton Rouge, Santa Clara, Indianapolis, Lewisburg, Washington DC, Austin, Boca Raton, Salt Lake City, Everett, Los Angeles, McHenry, Columbus, Cheyenne and St. Louis (to name a few of the origins). The meetings focused on prioritizing improvements and functionality for the next major release of the SIF Implementation Specification.

SIF Specification Development Coming to Bloomington, IL

Next week Integrity is hosting a SIFA Developer's Camp in Bloomington, IL. SIFA Developer's Camps focus primarily on the work of evolving the SIF specification. Some of the groundwork for the next major release of the specification was done at the board retreat in Columbus, OH in late 2007. The Bloomington meetings will focus on moving that work forward.
It is an important time for SIF as we leverage our proven Infrastructure in the field while actively looking for ways to incorporate other standards-based technologies, like Web Services, into the body of standards that the Association defines. We may diverge on this in the short term, but in the long run (over the next 5-7 years?) I believe we will end up with a unified architecture that incorporates the best pieces we have today with the best of "the rest of the world."
I would like to extend a warm welcome to anyone out there reading this who will be coming in for the Developer's Camp next week!

"Mix Master" Article in T.H.E. Journal

John K. Waters published an article in T.H.E. Journal titled "Mix Master." The article focuses on SIF and data warehouse work that we're doing with one of our clients, Champaign Unit District 4 in Champaign, IL. Mike Harden and Roger Grinnip from Champaign are quoted, as are Dave Moravec from Integrity and Larry Fruth from SIFA. Here is the link.

Student Record Exchange Pilot at Naperville CUSD 203

I am currently at the MIS Conference in San Francisco, CA. Today I participated in a presentation on a pilot project that we are working on with Naperville CUSD 203 in Illinois. The other partners in the pilot include SIFA and Docufide. My portion of the slide deck can be found here.

Example Intra-Zone and Extra-Zone Integration Architectures

One of the books I often recommend to people who are new to message based integration solutions is "Enterprise Integration Patterns" by Hohpe and Woolf. Visio stencils that contain shapes for the various patterns and pattern components can be downloaded from the book's website. The following diagram (click it to view a larger version) tries to do a few things...

First, it states SIF architecture in terms of Enterprise Integration Patterns (EIP). The second thing it does is illustrate one possible way to implement extra-zone services using EIP concepts. The third thing it does is to begin calling out the business and use cases for intra-zone versus extra-zone services, which are duplicated in the text below.

Intra-Zone Business and Use cases
1. Applications wish to exchange data on a regular basis
2. Applications are contained within a single enterprise, or closely related enterprises
3. Guaranteed delivery is desired or required
4. Central administration of message flow is desired or required
5. A collection of applications wish to share the same data

Extra-Zone Business and Use cases
1. Applications wish to exchange data on an infrequent basis
2. Applications have minimal or no organizational ties
3. Guaranteed delivery is not required
4. Central administration is not required
5. Two applications needs to share specific data

Pennsylvania Schools Interested in SIF

I attended the PETE&C conference in Hershey, PA on Sunday and Monday. It was encouraging to see a good turnout from both small and large districts at the pre-conference sessions on SIF. We were invited to attend by the Pennsylvania Department of Education and graciously hosted by our friends at the Central Susquehanna Intermediate Unit (CSIU). The SIF Association and several other SIFA members were also present. Thanks to everyone who attended! Here is the link to the slides that I presented. They contain information about my involvement in SIFA, information about Integrity, and examples of integrations that we have done.