Introduction

This documentation serves as an introduction to the changes made for the Ed-Fi Data Standard v2.0. A number of new concepts and patterns have been introduced, and several element names have changed to make the standard easier to understand and maintain. Most enhancements have come by way of feedback from real-world implementations by the Ed-Fi community. Detailed analysis was performed to ensure style consistency, offer increased extensibility, and to facilitate use of the Ed-Fi Data Standard via alternative loading and data exchange methods.

This documentation provides a high level overview of the changes and enhancements, best practices for implementation, and a list of impactful and substantial data model changes. Detailed type and element changes are shown, along with a rationale for the change and links to additional detail.

Audience

The audience for this documentation are technical professionals and decision makers who have adopted previous versions of the Ed-Fi Data Standard. Those considering Ed-Fi Data Standard v2.0 adoption may find this information useful as well.

Prerequisites

To gain the most benefit from this information, you should already be familiar with the following knowledge areas:

• Ed-Fi technology, see www.ed-fi.org
• Extensible Markup Language (XML), see www.w3.org/XML
• XML Schema (XSD), see www.w3.org/standards/xml/schema