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The Ed-Fi Unifying Data Model is the widely adopted, CEDS-aligned, open-source data standard developed by the Ed-Fi community for the improvement of the community, and for the broader purpose of helping the K–12 education community in using data as a strategic asset to improve educational outcomes of students. The Unifying Data Model captures the meaning and inherent structure of the most important information in the K–12 education enterprise.

The Ed-Fi Unifying Data Model, along with the normative and non-normative guidance in the Ed-Fi Standards, serve as the foundation for enabling interoperability among secure data systems.

Note

Please note that the current version of Data Standard v4 is v4.0 (full version number 4.0.0), which is the final stable version for v4 - see the Ed-Fi Technology Roadmap for previous and future Data Standard release versions.

Also see the What's New page for information on the changes in this release.

Contents

Data Model Documentation

The data model is referred to as the Ed-Fi Unifying Data Model, or UDM. The UDM is documented via 2 primary artifacts: the Ed-Fi Data Handbook and a set of Unified Modeling Language (UML) diagrams.

Ed-Fi Data Handbook for v4.0

Ed-Fi UDM UML Diagrams for v4.0 (Visio format, on GitHub)

Additional documentation is provided in the Ed-Fi Unifying Data Model section in this space. This additional documentation provides narrative overviews of domains and key entities, as well as normative best practice guidance.

Version

The most recent version and name for the Ed-Fi Data Standard is Ed-Fi Data Standard for Suite 3 v4.0.0.

This is the stable final version of Data Standard v4 following an early access release of the same version.

For more information on the community development and governance process, please visit Standards Development Process.
For more information on data standard versioning, please consult: Ed-Fi Data Standard Versioning and Releases

REST API Bindings

This release contains introduces some changes classified as "breaking", so API clients using previous versions should be aware of and prepare for that change. API bindings will be published with the v4.0 final release.

Bulk / XML Bindings

In addition, a set of Bulk / XML standards (core entity XML definitions and interchange specifications) based on this release are available on GitHub.

Sample Data

The Data Standard includes sample data in the bulk XML format. The sample data is based on an entirely fictitious district called "Grand Bend ISD." Note that the sample data does not cover all model elements, and that while some effort is made to provide realistic data, the data is managed more to provide coverage of elements rather than realism.

Default Descriptors

The Standard includes default "code sets" or "enumeration values" and their definitions. Descriptor values are published on GitHub in XML format.

Only descriptor values in the "ed-fi.org" namespace are part of the standard. In some contexts, the Alliance publishes values in the Grand Bend "gbisd.edu" namespace (Grand Bend the fictitious district for the sample data). This is done for descriptors whose actual values are nearly always locally defined, and therefore non-standardizable.

Data Exchange Standards

For a list of standards built on the Ed-Fi Unifying Data Model, visit the Ed-Fi Data Exchange Standards Home.

Guidelines

The Ed-Fi Alliance publishes technical guidelines for building solutions based on the Ed-Fi Data Standard:

For REST API design and implementation guidelines, visit the Ed-Fi API Design & Implementation Guidelines documentation.
For XSD design and implementation guidelines covering bulk XML, visit the Ed-Fi XSD Design & Implementation Guidelines (PDF) documentation.

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