SIF for Dummies…

Over the last few months we’ve been rapidly learning about SIF and figuring out the implications on our work. There’s a lot of information online about this, but thought it would be useful to reprint some of what I have read in a nice easy to understand format along with a set of links to go and read some more.

Key terms:

SIF- Systems Interoperability Framework.

SIF Compliant- A product that conforms to SIF standard but isn’t yet certified.

SIF Certified- A product that has passed the SIF certification process.

ZIS- Controls communication between the agents and what data they can access.

MIS- Management Information System. Where schools hold all data about learners.

Agent- The link between an application (an MIS for example) and the ZIS. Translates the XML from the ZIS into a format that the application can understand. Also watches for changes in the data in the application and submits back to the ZIS.

SIFA- Schools Interoperability Framework Association. An organisation that defines the rules and regulations for people using SIF.

What you (I) need to know about SIF:

So, the basis of all this is a common problem inside schools. We have lots of data stored in various different places, and different pieces of software that need to use it. Each of these applications have their own ways of storing, displaying, modifying and distributing that data. That’s fine if you only need the information in that one place, but if you need it in more than one (and you always do) there are no standardised ways to move this data, and no good ways of keeping it all up to date (for example, if a student joins your school how soon before they appear on the list of users in your library?).

This is where SIFA comes in. An organisation made up of representatives from education & the software world they decided to set a standard for storing this data and for how applications could access it. Their site (link below) has a huge amount of data on the technicalities of this, but the short version is something like this-

- A ZIS sits at the centre of everything, acting as a router that deals with all the transactions between applications. An individual school could have a ZIS, or the ZIS could be central to the LEA, or even wider. The main point here is that there is one set of information, and one method of communicating that between systems. ‘Write once, use many times’ is a nice quote from the SIFA documentation which explains it better than me.
- In order for an application to access the data it requires it communicates with the ZIS using a SIF agent. The ZIS routes the request to the right place, and providing it has the correct permissions (again controlled by the ZIS) the agent can access the data it needs, and puts it into the application. The agent also deals with any changes that happen in the data, syncing things up where required.
- The SIF agents are built around a defined standard, and an agent has to be approved by SIFA before it can be used.

The reason why this is all so exciting is about centralising data. If all of your school data is only in one place it never goes out of date anywhere, and providing the agents exist to access it any application that needs it can get at this one source. The final specification for SIF is still a work in progress, but at the moment it seems that both the big companies and some key open source projects are working towards SIF certification.

Next moves for Wildern will be to try and join SIFA, get involved with what is going on with the specification, make some contacts with the open projects, & start to look at what is required for creating a SIF agent.

Update- have just done a little bit of correcting on this post thanks to Penny Murray at BECTA. For a much better look at what SIF is read the documents online at SIFA UK. (link below).

Relevant sources/links:

- SIFA UK

- Partnership XChange. The Capita ZIS.

- OFZIS and OpenZIS. Open source ZIS products currently being developed.

- Edugeek thread about SIF and OSS. Long thread, be warned…