Agenda

• Highlights from summer-time Special Interest Groups
  • API Standard
  • Managed Service Providers
  • Student Information Systems
• Analytics Middle Tier resuscitated
• Release cadence revisited, in brief
• Building a validation ecosystem
  • Should the community do more to share validation processes and knowledge?
  • What tools / practices should the Ed-Fi Alliance consider to facilitate such an exchange?

Materials

Participants

Notes

API Standard SIG

• Was there discussion around making the API Standard the standard  instead of the Data Standard? → No, did not discuss that.
• Data Standard is what unifies the work from Ed-Fi 1 through Ed-Fi 3+: moved from XML file exchange based on the standard to web API-based data exchange.
• Acknowledge it is an important question that should be revisited.
  • Is there a practical way that the Data Standard team could develop the standard from an "API first" perspective?
  • One answer: yes, build an ontology instead of a table model
    • Isn't that what the Ed-Fi Data Model has? An ontology? A database table model is secondary and only in service to the API.
  • Confusion may be in what we call things.
  • The API definition is what ultimately matters even today.
  • Can Open API spec do a good job of representing entity relationships, as the current Data Standard / Data Model do?
    • Yes, through an ontology.
    • What does that even mean though?
    • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Ontology_Language

Managed Service Providers SIG

• Release cadence - still has a problem with a gap year.
• Maybe more correct to say there is a potential misalignment of an Ed-Fi gap year with a state gap year, several years down the line. Extend diagram through 2027-2028 to see the issue.
• In general we hope that we don't need a Data Standard 6 in 2025. That is, we're not aiming to have breaking changes, just preparing for the possibility.
• Do states recommend break-rest-rest-break: two rest years? Or break-rest-break-rest?
  • need to gather more facts about this.
• Three year stability problem as drawn out by Andrew Rice:
  

Analytics Middle Tier

• Alliance's recommendation is to go with API-first approach, not direct database access.
• TAG feedback in the past has been to drop support for AMT.
• However, we have more AMT users than we realized, as was revealed at the 2023 Summit when we announced an end of support for AMT.
• All acknowledge that we want to discourage use of AMT. Sense of the meeting was clear: this group prefers that we not release an update with .NET 8 and Data Standard 5 support.
• What alternatives do we have? Are they easy enough to use?
  • API-to-AMT proof of concept project
    

    Editorial note: Not listed in the Ed-Fi Exchange. -SF

  • Education Analytics EDU
    

    Editorial note: I cannot find an EA product called "EDU" on the EA website, and not listed on the Ed-Fi Exchange. -SF

Validation Ecosystem

Ran out of time for discussion.

Next Meeting

18 Jan 2024 

1. Release cadence
2. Future of ODS/API
3. AMT

Action Items

• Stephen Fuqua work with Ed-Fi Solutions team to better understand the state release / update cadence and the impact of the current Ed-Fi technology release cadence plan.