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December 2024 - Project Tanager Workgroup

December 2024 - Project Tanager Workgroup

Owned by Stephen Fuqua
Last updated: Mar 10, 2025 by Vinaya Mayya
6 min read

Participants

  • Denver Public Schools - Max Paulson

  • Ed-Fi staff & contractors

    • Adam Hopkins

    • Brad Banister

    • Robert Hunter

    • Sayee Srinivasan

    • Stephen Fuqua

    • Steven Arnold

    • Vinaya Mayya

  • Edufied - Geoff McElhanon

  • EdWise Group - Britto Augustine

  • Resultant - Joshua Impson

  • Simpat Tech - Ashish Patel

  • Utah State Board of Education - Katrina Brinkley

Agenda

  • Review the roadmap

  • Demonstration of current work

  • Design Questions

Roadmap

Planned Architecture

image-20241204-030548.png

Basic timeline

  1. Tech Congress 2025 - release candidate with “basic” feature set useable for pilot testing typical data exchange scenarios.

Focused primarily on LEA and vendor-to-vendor scenarios.

State scenarios are critical for this project. The Alliance will be designing for state usage scenarios before Tech Congress 2025. The primary missing pieces on the release candidate time frame:

  • Supporting all authorization models

  • Running on MSSQL

  • Running on PostgreSQL or MSSQL without Kafka and search database

  • ODS-like schema for reporting

  1. Summit 2025 - production-ready version 1.0

Aiming for feature parity with the ODS/API from the perspective of API-based integrations, with one primary exception: no plan to support XML-based composites.

Feature List

Reviewing the list below:

  1. Which features listed “By Summit” should we prioritize to try to release sooner?

  2. Are there any features we failed to list?

Meeting notes:

  • Data Standard support

    • Prioritize 5.2 for Tech Congress; many states are moving that direction right now.

    • Nice to have support for 4.0 as well, for pilot testing with vendors who have not updated to 5.x yet.

    • 6.0 preview is not useful from a pilot testing standpoint, since no one has an integration yet.

    • In 1.0, MSP’s would like to have support for multiple data standards at the same time: a single API deployment that can store both 5.2 and 4.0 data structures, with validation based on URL route. Allows for better cost optimization.

      • Parking lot: design discussion on mechanisms for supporting this. Initial proposal to prefer separate database instances for different Data Standard versions. Maybe tie DS version into the URL routing for instances?

    • Extensions should be the next priority after authorization; would like to have by Tech Congress if possible.

  • Profiles

    • Remove “dynamic” from the list to avoid confusion (same with “XML” on “XML Composites”).

    • Agree: must have for 1.0 and not mandatory for Release Candidate at Tech Congress.

  • Level 2 validation

    • Need to explain both types better when turning the table below into a formal document.

    • For streaming data, mention observability as well.

  • ETags

    • Some client integration may be looking for _etag in the body or the ETag header on POST requests.

    • For release candidate, should at least stub out a hard-coded value to prevent breaking client integrations.

      • Design note: we plan to calculate ETags based on hashing the _lastModifiedDate. This is relatively trivial. We should simply consider ETags as a must-have feature for the spring release candidate.

  • ODS-like Views

    • This discussion helped us recognize the value of talking about (at least) two stages of pilot testing: transactional vendor integration (via the API), and downstream reporting.

    • ODS-like views are intended to support the second stage of pilot testing. States could start testing a 1.0 release without the ODS-like views. Can potentially defer until after 1.0.

  • Core database storage

    • Correction, Education Analytics is today using Aurora for the ODS/API.

  • Change Queries

    • Current usage scenarios:

      • API-to-API synchronization via API Publisher

      • Assessment rostering

      • Enable Data Union (EDU) data warehousing.

    • We should consider this a must have solution, even if the streaming architecture can provide alternative synchronization patterns. Too many integrations would break without this.

  • Authorization

    • Ownership-based authorization and combined strategies are used in multiple states. Definitely a must have for 1.0, but can live without them for the release candidate.

Data Standard and API Standard Compatibility

Feature

ODS/API Platform

Data Management Service

By TC

By Summit

Feature

ODS/API Platform

Data Management Service

By TC

By Summit

Resources API - core Ed-Fi Data Standard

done

 

Descriptor API - core Ed-Fi Data Standard

done

 

Discovery API

done

 

Data Standard version independence

MUST HAVE

 

MetaEd-based extensions

MUST HAVE

Dynamic Profiles

must have

Multiple data standards in same deployment

Could Have

Does anyone want this?

 

Composites

WOn't Have

 

Data Integrity and Validation Features

Feature

ODS/API Platform

Data Management Service

By TC

By Summit

Feature

ODS/API Platform

Data Management Service

By TC

By Summit

Level 0 and level 1 validation

done

 

Descriptor validation

done

 

Reference validation

done

 

Cascading updates on key changes

done

 

Level 2 validation via SQL scripts

MUST HAVE

Once a compatibility layer is available, will be able to run the same SQL scripts used today for Level 2 validation

 

Realtime level 2 validations via streaming data

Could Have

Does anyone want this? Might be more of a demonstration than a core feature of the system

 

API Client Features

Feature

ODS/API Platform

Data Management Service

By TC

By Summit

Feature

ODS/API Platform

Data Management Service

By TC

By Summit

Concurrency management with ETags

MUST HAVE

LIMIT/OFFSET paging

done

 

Cursor-based paging

(7.3)

MUST HAVE

 

Identification code-based queries

(7.3)

MUST HAVE

 

Identities API

could have

Need to review field usage and fitness-for-purpose before committing.

 

Unique ID System Integration

could have

Need to review field usage and fitness-for-purpose before committing.

 

Database Technologies

Feature

ODS/API Platform

Data Management Service

By TC

By Summit

Feature

ODS/API Platform

Data Management Service

By TC

By Summit

Core database storage in PostgreSQL

done

The database structure is very different than the ODS database

 

Core database storage in MSSQL

MUST HAVE

 

GET queries using search database

done

Either OpenSearch or Elasticsearch

 

GET queries using relational database

MUST HAVE

Removes the requirement to run Kafka and OpenSearch or Elasticsearch

 

Reporting queries using ODS database schema

MUST HAVE

This will likely be a compatibility layer to ease the transition for those who have built reporting solutions on the ODS database structure.

Is this required for state-based pilot testing? Can it be finalized after the 1.0 release?

 

 

Core database storage in managed PostgreSQL-compatible databases (e.g. Aurora, Cosmos DB)

SHOULD Have

Conceptually this should work, but we may need community help for testing these scenarios while the development team focuses on code-level features.

 

Realtime population of a data lake

SHOULD Have

 

Redis-based caching

SHOULD Have

 

Data Management Features

Feature

ODS/API Platform

Data Management Service

By TC

By Summit

Feature

ODS/API Platform

Data Management Service

By TC

By Summit

Streaming data out via Kafka

done

 

Change Queries API

SHOULD Have

Required for API Publisher synchronization; if not implemented must provide alternative.

 

Security Features

Feature

ODS/API Platform

Data Management Service

By TC

By Summit

Feature

ODS/API Platform

Data Management Service

By TC

By Summit

API-driven client credential management

(Admin API)

done

 

OAuth token authentication

done

 

Integration with third party OAuth identity providers

MUST HAVE

At minimum, will support Keycloak, with clear path for supporting other providers

 

API-driven claimset management

(Admin API)

MUST HAVE

 

Namespace authorization

MUST HAVE

 

Relationship authorization

MUST HAVE

 

Ownership authorization

MUST HAVE

Combined authorization

MUST HAVE

Extensible authorization filtering

(7.3)

MUST HAVE

 

Deployment Management

Feature

ODS/API Platform

Data Management Service

By TC

By Summit

Feature

ODS/API Platform

Data Management Service

By TC

By Summit

Docker images and sample Docker Compose settings

done

 

Multitenancy routing and instance management

MUST HAVE

PowerShell installation scripts for Windows Server

Could Have

Does anyone want this?

 

Deployment orchestration via (Kubernetes, Terraform, Cloud Formation, ARM, etc.)

(though there are Exchange contributions)

WOn't Have

Unless a community member contributes

 

Other Integrations

Feature

ODS/API Platform

Data Management Service

By TC

By Summit

Feature

ODS/API Platform

Data Management Service

By TC

By Summit

SwaggerUI

must have

 

Admin Console

coming soon

must have

Demonstration

Meeting notes:

Ran out of time for the demonstration. The sequence diagram below shows the interactions for client credential management.

The demonstration was going to use this file which uses the REST Client extension for Visual Studio Code. Even without VS Code, the file should be easy to follow along with while replicating the API calls in another client such as Postman.

Working Client Management and Authentication

sequenceDiagram actor Sys Admin rect rgb(191, 223, 255) note right of Sys Admin: One time setup. Sys Admin->>Config Service: POST /connect/register Config Service->>Identity Provider: Create credentials note right of Identity Provider: Created with config role Config Service-->>Sys Admin: clientCredentials end Sys Admin->>Config Service: POST /v2/vendors Config Service->>Config Database: INSERT dbo.Vendor Sys Admin->>Config Service: POST /v2/applications Config Service->>Identity Provider: Create credentials note right of Identity Provider: Created with dms role Identity Provider-->>Config Service: clientCredentials Config Service->>Config Database: INSERT dbo.Application Config Database -->>Config Service: applicationId Config Service->>Config Database: INSERT dbo.ApplicationEducationOrganization Config Service->>Config Database: INSERT dbo.ApiClient Config Service-->>Sys Admin: clientCredentials
image (2).png

Design Questions

Meeting notes:

Ran out of time. Will keep these design questions for a future meeting.

What plans are there for error detection (i.e. dropped records) and correction?

A question that arose at the Ed-Fi Summit session. Suggestions?

How will year rollover be handled?

Perhaps not germane to the release candidate, but we should still ask: are there special considerations that the development team needs to be thinking about in advance?

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