Post on 02-Jan-2016
Linking research & learning technologies through standards
What is Link Affiliates?
Brands the DEST developed (now DEEWR lead) technical standards and interoperability capability
LINK: what we do - linking people, projects, technologies
AFFILIATES: the way we work - our team, our clients, our partners, other projects, standards organisations …
Distributed Team – based at USQ, partnerships with Melbourne, Monash
Linking research & learning technologies through standards
What is Link Affiliates?
Agenda: strategic and effective use of IT through promoting/enabling
– Standards– Community Practice (cross sectoral)– Enabling Shared Infrastructure
Principles:
– Cross sectoral expertise and knowledge transfer– Australian Capability – maintaining, supporting and
providing opportunities to ~– Standards bringing people together
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What is the e-Framework?
(view from 40,000 ft)
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What is it?
Background
– Enabling meaningful conversations & collaboration across boundaries
– DEST / JISC e-Framework for Education and Research
– Now DEEWR (Australia), JISC (UK), MoE (NZ), SURF (NL)
– e-Framework is a tool used by Link Affiliates to model, build and communicate our outputs
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“Sharing service-oriented approaches to interoperability”
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What is it?
Goal:– technical interoperability– in education and research– by improving
• strategic planning• implementation processes
Principles:– service oriented approach (soa)– open standards– community involvement– incremental development
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Service oriented approach (soa)
Traditional approach– spec -> buy/build -> test -> deploy -> hope for no change– Large scale project implementation
Service Orientation approach (little “soa”)
– is a business oriented approach
– applying Services to meet Business Needs
• (our “business” is research and education)
– designing systems for change and reuse• build services for integration, interoperability, and loose
coupling
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Interoperability?
Interoperable Development (Standards and Services)
– Standards encourage Interoperability &Service encourage Integration
– But Standards and Services are not enough!
– Addresses interoperability at the pain points
• At the business policy/process level
• At an application and implementation level
• At the service-oriented level (service interfaces and contracts)
• At the semantic level
• In a specific context
Diagram courtesy of Peter Croger
Interoperability requires Compatibility
(AICTEC - Interoperability Standards Report)
BusinessProcesses
InformationResources
ApplicationSystems
TechnicalInfrastructure
OrganisationalPolicies
ORGANISATION B
BusinessProcesses
InformationResources
ApplicationSystems
TechnicalInfrastructure
OrganisationalPolicies
ORGANISATION A Collaboration
Compatibility
Compatibility
Compatibility
Compatibility
Compatibility• Certain amount of Compatibility required• How much standardisation?• At what levels?• What are the pain points?
e-Framework Components
A Service Usage Model (SUM) describes how the various Service (Expression or Genres) and data sources are organised
Service Genres are technology-neutral abstract capabilities, bound to specific technologies by Service Expressions.
Expression can have more than one Service Implementations and are deployed as Service Instances.
Service Genre Service Genre
ServiceExpression
ServiceExpression
ServiceExpression
ServiceImplementation
ServiceImplementation
ServiceInstance
ServiceInstance
Standards
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What can it do? Summary
In summary, we provide to the community…
– Consistent documentation
– Catalogue of technologies & standards
– Tool for communities to make informed choices
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What can it do? Summary
But the e-Framework
–is not intended to be prescriptive
–is not meant to be implemented all at once
–is not an architecture
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The e-Framework at work
(view from the ground)
Linking research & learning technologies through standards
What do we actually do?The e-Framework outputs … a knowledge base …
Describing interfaces between applications• technology independent genres, technology dependent expressions, descriptions of standards
Service Usage Models• service oriented blueprints• how to combine services to meet business requirements• reusable patterns, good practice, capability/service maps
Collaboration framework• common vocabulary• templates for developing documentation• information on technologies, projects, practice
Harvest– OAI PMH (FRED)– OAI PMH + LOM +
Web services
Search– Service view of SR
W– SRW + LOM
Context set
Obtain– OpenURL (interfac
e)– OpenURL +
Handle (SUM)
Standards-based
Implementable– heavily profiled
PILINPersistent Identifier Linking Infrastructure
Technology-independent map of a complex space
– Developed in parallel with an identifier information model
Compare identifier implementations
– URLs– Purls– Handles– SRB GUIDs …
Implement an abstract identifier API?
Linking research & learning technologies through standards
What’s happening
Constantly updating website:– http://www.e-framework.org/ – Knowledge base, Getting Started, Success Stories, Technical
Walkthrough
Lots of SUMs and Service Expressions in development– See the wiki (linked from website)– Contribution and community involvement through projects such as
MAMS, FRED, PILIN, ARCHER (locally) and overseas
Domain mapping of service architectures– Repositories (FRED/AU, US), Geospatial (UK lead), Libraries (NLA/AU,
US), Mapping Security (UK, AU, NZ), ePortfolio starting (AU, UK)– International collaboration happening around these
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SOA – What’s the big deal?
Linking research & learning technologies through standards
SOA adoption
What are your core/high-value service?
How are they governed and change?
How do I use them? (stakeholders, SLAs, contracts)
Where do I go to get the “big picture”?
Start at the start…
Semantic ModelSemantic ModelData ModelData Model
Business ModelsBusiness Models
Service ModelsService Models
Create aCreate aGovernanceGovernanceFrameworkFramework
Linking research & learning technologies through standards
Recordkeeping?
Record– “Anything providing permanent evidence of or information about past events”
(dictionary def.)
Metadata– “Metadata is fundamentally about interoperability: how we work together. In
situations where metadata is useful we are effectively making the statement that the “data” itself is not enough, we need more information. Within the scope of data and interoperable the fundamental activities are communities (more than one person) sharing and discovering data. The greater the distance over which interoperability is required (eg. space, culture, time, scale of activity, organisation boundaries) the more important metadata becomes.”(my 2 cents)
e-Framework– Goal is interoperability– Facilitated by communication and standards– Consistent documentation across boundaries