Strategies for Data Out from the ODS/API

Owned by Chris Moffatt (Deactivated)
Last updated: Jul 17, 2019 by Vinaya Mayya
2 min read

In past Ed-Fi ODS was primarily used for data collection use cases and recently several of data integration use cases have emerged.

  • ODS to ODS data out (e.g. state reporting, collaborative ODS)
  • Self-serve analytics  (e.g. QuickSight, Power BI, Tableau)
  • Off the shelf analytics (e.g. Schoolzilla , Hoonuit)
  • System integration use case  (Internal systems - Badge, transportation, Food Service)
  • Vendor integration use case  (analytics, transportation, food service vendors directly pulling data out of ODS)
  • Notification Service use case (notify client about an event in ODS)

Several features have been developed into Ed-Fi ODS to make it technically feasible to use it for these data integration use cases. First, support for Composites resources was added in 2016 to allow read-only resources to be defined that combine data from more than one standard API resource in a single request.
More recently, support for Change Queries was added which enables vendors to treat an ODS as a data integration hub and to process incremental changes and  Analytics Middle Tier was added to support reporting use case for Early Warning System. There was also a Bulk Data Exchange Over REST API SIG last year that covered bulk JSON data out of Ed-Fi  ODS.  

Ed-Fi would like to gather more data out use cases to inform its roadmap on possible technical solutions to maximize benefits to the community  

The goals of this Special Interest Group are to convene community experts to:

  • Collect and document data out use cases

  • Review and prioritize community needs and use cases in this area

  • Provide actionable recommendations for the Ed-Fi Technology Roadmap

Participation

  • Members will be expected to submit their data out use case and discuss in detail the nature of their use case.
  • Members could be asked to take a look at one the existing technical solution and report back their thoughts on the feasibility using the feature. 

Participants

Meetings

How to Join

To participate, please contact vinaya.mayya@ed-fi.org  and include your data out  use case in User story collection sheet