Steve Lay, Questionmark Integration Team Lead

Transcription

1 Steve Lay, Questionmark Integration Team Lead Slide 4 1

2 Powerful Standards Basic Concepts Slide 5 RFC2822 Internet Message Format (Plain text only!) RFC1122/3 RFC1119 RFC1034/5 RFC974 Hosts Time DNS MTA RFC2119 Keywords ASCII Char. Codes RFC2234 Slide 6 2

3 Slide 7 Copyright Questionmark Corporation and/or Questionmark Computing Limited, known collectively as Questionmark. All rights reserved. User Experience Web Services APIs Security Business Layer Data Layer Slide 8 3

4 User Experience Web Services APIs Security Business Layer Data Layer Slide 9 Low barriers to entry Example code licensed appropriately Transparency Slide 10 4

5 Making technical information: easy to find free to access, requiring no more than an address Make it as quick and as easy as possible to start developing: Registration Developer install Hello world, build, deploy and test Slide 11 User Experience Web Services APIs Security Business Layer Data Layer Slide 12 5

6 Developer Support Site No login required All QMWISe and PIP documentation available Open to search engine indexing developer.questionmark.com We re steadily building content on this site Many of the integrations being demonstrated around the conference are documented as How tos in the APIs section of the site Slide 13 Sample integrations will be licensed and demonstrated to encourage adaptation incorporation into third party products community sourced solutions How will we do this? free and open source licenses will be used, e.g., the Moodle connector is already available under the GPL Slide 14 6

7 Community Edition Software Slide 15 Copyright Questionmark Corporation and/or Questionmark Computing Limited, known collectively as Questionmark. All rights reserved. User Experience Web Services APIs Security Business Layer Data Layer Slide 16 7

8 Freely available, including source code Developed in the open Follows the release early release often pattern Uses open source licenses so you are free to Use it Modify it Redistribute it But no technical support is provided Won t apply to all integration products Details are available in the Knowledgebase Slide 17 Community Editions: Free, Open Source early and often Open Source Development Project Supported stable releases: Slide 18 Copyright Questionmark Corporation and/or Questionmark Computing Limited, known collectively as Questionmark. All rights reserved. 8

9 developer.questionmark.com Slide 19 Copyright Questionmark Corporation and/or Questionmark Computing Limited, known collectively as Questionmark. All rights reserved. Open agenda Build an open platform to enable third party developers to create integration solutions and added value components We develop with the same APIs you do Use of simple open industry standards where possible Actively work to define new industry standards where required Develop new APIs only if necessary Document APIs well Slide 20 9

10 Custom Connector Application Application Custom Interfaces Slide 21 Connector-less Integration Application Application Standard Interfaces Slide 22 10

11 Slide 23 There s a standard for that! Seriously, RFC4144 contains useful information! Eighty Percent of Success is Showing Up Be Helpful Learn The Traditions and Rules Don t get lost in acronyms you do not know Pick Your Points Most people don t want to join a standards body But technical standards are set within, as well as between, organizations Learn about yours and feed them back to the suppliers you interact with Don t wait for your proposal to be vetoed by a technical team you ve never met! Slide 24 11

12 Identify the maturity of the technical standard and set your expectations accordingly! Draft specifications are unlikely to have any published conformance tests Organizations may declare conformance to standards in many cases with no checks Standards bodies have trade marks that may be used to indicate conformance following a testing process Are there publicly available test suites? You may be able to check conformance locally or using online tools E.g., W3C validation checker, Ask the question Slide 25 Standards are unlikely to fit your requirements exactly Try to bring local extensions to the standards process Directly to the standards organization Through an industry body in your sector Through your suppliers If your extensions are adopted it will save you time when upgrading software or changing suppliers Slide 26 12

13 QMWISe SOAP: Message Protocol Questionmark: Methods + Data Transport Protocols WSDL QML HTTP(S) XML Slide 28 13

14 Slide 29 Tempo Challenge & Issues for Traditional SDOs They can t keep up with the expected pace They can t disrupt their installed base They aren t R&D organizations Community Projects Code first, Implement to refine, then Document to standardize. Slide 30 14

15 Announcements to collaborate and harmonize existing specifications Attempts to write more specs, but smaller specs Attempts to leverage mass-market & consumer technologies Increasing importance of resource-based specs using RESTful web services Slide 31 QMWISe SOAP: Message Protocol Questionmark: Methods Linked + Data Data Transport Protocols WSDL Data Formats QML HTTP(S) XML Slide 32 15

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17 Speculative Standards HTML5 XHTML SVG EPUB Silverlight Flash RSS Atom icalendar Open Office XML Open Document Format W3C Widgets Open Social Slide 35 Why is Flash in trouble? Hard to implement a Flash player on lightweight CPUs It isn t an open specification, Adobe have blown hot and cold on this No consensus with other key players: Apple and Microsoft Silverlight Microsoft s answer to Flash: not open either HTML5 and SVG Softly-softly approach but more in tune with newer platforms, data is permeable HTML5 WC3 Recommendation expected in late Increasingly the foundation of app platforms that are linked to business models that might work for content Slide 36 17

18 Speculative Standards OpenID OAuth Shibboleth ActiveDirectory LDAP IMS Enterprise IMS LIS HR-XML SIF PESC Slide 37 Learner Information Services A development of earlier Enterprise work Specification still in development Early drafts have been implemented by Oracle Current draft is significantly different Concerns over verbose binding to XML No path to standardization identified yet However The information model appears sound Potential for future interoperability Slide 38 18

19 Speculative Standards QTI v1 QTI v2 PENS AICC/HACP AICC/CMI SCORM IMS Content Pkg IMS Common Cart. IMS LTI Slide 39 Question and Test Interoperability Version 1.x published as a specification Implementations well established Questionmark support QTI version 1 Used as the basis for IMS Common Cartridge Proven limitations make it unlikely to progress to a standard Version 2.x published on as a draft Implementations gradually appearing Builds on IMS Content Packaging Some uncertainty over future In general, there is no clear path from an IMS specification to a standard Roadmap unclear! Slide 40 19

20 SCORM draws on other learning standards to build a more powerful standard covering: Content Format (IMS Content Packaging) Runtime Communication Model (CMI/Javascript) SCORM is currently under review with a possible new release in 2011 There will be a separate session about this later! Slide 41 Initially, a single add-on to consume multiple tools Tool Provider Tool Consumer Tool Provider uses LTI in a similar way to AICC/HACP Slide 42 20

21 Learning Tools Interoperability BasicLTI Cut-down version of the specification released as a draft for early adopters In many ways, LTI is an app framework like Facebook or other social platforms SimpleLTI A fore-runner with some early proof of concept implementations, including some free source code now being migrated to Basic LTI Slide 43 HR-XML Currently supported for export IMS QTI also contains a data format for interoperability of results Little or no implementation at version 1.x Some implementations using 2.x A candidate for inclusion in a future version of SCORM Emphasis on Reports rather than raw data Slide 44 21

22 Developer Blog on: developer.questionmark.com Interact! API forum is now live with your communities ID Questionmark Blogs: blogs.questionmark.com Questionmark Communities: Slide 45 Copyright Questionmark Corporation and/or Questionmark Computing Limited, known collectively as Questionmark. All rights reserved. 22