What is Happening
The next planned release of Analytics Middle Tier (AMT), version 4.1, will be the last supported release of Admin App. From that point, it will be in maintenance mode until December 31, 2024. While in maintenance mode, a new patch release will only occur for critical bugs and security updates. In 2025, Admin App will move to the Ed-Fi Exchange and the source repository will be set into archive, signaling that the application support has formally ended.
The views inside AMT 4.1 will continue to be useful in all supported ODS/API versions long after it goes out of support - nothing will suddenly change on January 1, 2025.
Why?
Analytics Middle Tier was designed to help report and application builders more quickly develop solutions that directly access an ODS database. This is a pattern that the Ed-Fi Alliance no longer encourages, for several reasons:
- While the views in AMT are useful and achieve their objective, they create a de facto alternate data model and API (albeit, a database API rather than a web API). The Ed-Fi Alliance is dedicated to promoting a single Data Standard and its related data model, via the web-based Ed-Fi API.
- Direct database usage for reporting often create resource contention that can be harmful to transactional systems.
- With the growth of large-scale deployments, where another organization manages the Ed-Fi API on behalf of an LEA, fewer and fewer organizations continue to have the right network access and permissions for direct database applications.
Next Steps for Users
- Users of ODS/API before version 7.1: no action needed in the short term
- Users of ODS/API 7.1: watch for a release announcement about Analytics Middle Tier 4.1.
- Anyone wishing to continue using Analytics Middle Tier from 2025 and beyond is welcome to create a fork of the source code repository.