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Building Common Services Infrastructure
James Dalziel
Adjunct Professor and Director
Macquarie E-learning Centre of Excellence (MELCOE)
www.melcoe.mq.edu.au
Overview
• Why do common services matter?
• What are common services?
• Where to next?
• A Teacher wants to add a seamless link from the LMS to a specific library e-reserve article, and then add another link to a broad-ranging search across various repositories so students can search for other similar articles (with direct links to full text versions of relevant articles once discovered by student searches).
• A Librarian wants to ensure that digital rights, copyright and fair use are properly managed within a collection of resources aggregated by a Lecturer for use in the LMS, and then later to preserve any Lecturer-created resources within the aggregation, as well as persistent pointers to any external copyright materials, for the future.
• A Student wishes to gain easy access to various learning and information resources across a university, with contextual advice on searching techniques together with online help from a virtual reference desk. The virtual reference desk is able to see previous failed search attempts by the student if the student decides to share these failed searches.
• A Students wishes to automatically gain access to a sophisticated weather data service, where access to the service should be anonymous, but the weather data provider needs to know that the student is authenticated at their school, and the anonymous access request has been approved by the teacher.
• An IT Administrator wants to provide a single login point to all staff and students for seamless access to all systems, but only to the systems they are entitled to use according to the security and policy requirements of each system and the institution itself.
• A Student doing remedial maths has used a diagnostic test to identify key gaps in their basic mathematical concepts, at which point an automated search system seeks out the ideal maths remedial learning object to present to the student based on their weaknesses.
• A Student studying a Shakespeare play is struggling to understand an important soliloquy, so he/she conducts a special type of search for similar aged students across the world who are struggling with the same soliloquy, and then arranges with them to discuss their ideas within a dynamically created asynchronous discussion environment over the coming week. The group may also choose to search for a mentor to assist them.
• A Student uses a secure e-book reader to view a large teacher-created “coursepack” of readings sourced from many different publishers. The student can choose to print out individual sections themselves, or send off a request to their university printing service for overnight customi printing of large selections of the coursepack. Publishers receive an automated, fair return for their relevant contributions to the coursepack.
Why do common services matter?
• These use cases are only possible with:– Multiple e-learning and information systems
– Distributed systems
– Deep integration
– Powerful and flexible access management
– Sophisticated concepts of identity, trust, federation, privacy and automated policy
– Implementation of agreed standards• Covering data models and system behaviour
What are common services?
• Common services are components that play a similar role across software applications, eg– Portals– Access management – Identity management– Database management– File system management– Identifiers– Messaging/transport– etc
What are common services?
• More easily understood diagramatically
• NB: From a software vendor perspective, common services are the necessary infrastructure to make your system “run”,but are NOT your competitive advantage– That is, prior to web services models, you still had
to build all the common services anyway to show you unique “thing”
Education IT Logical Architecture
Client
Security / Authentication
Directory Services / Identity
Application ModulesERP Finance and HR; Library systems; Student Information SystemLearning Management System; Learning Content Management System Customer Relationship Management; Content Management SystemComputer Assisted Assessment, etc
Messaging, Integration, Workflow
Client
Security / Authentication
Directory Services
Application Modules
Messaging, Integration, Workflow
Web Browser
Portal Login / Single Sign On
LDAP/X.500 Directory Services
ERP Finance& HR
StudentInformation
System
Librarysystems
LearningManagement
System
Core Services - Workflow
Core Services - Integration APIs
A Current (ideal) University IT environment
COLIS - Abstract model of University IT Architecture
IMS DRI Model
(early version)
Examples from UK Framework Discussions
CETIS - Scott Wilson
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/uploaded_documents/scott%20wilson%20presentation.ppt
NB: Relevant framework slides are in the second section after the standards diagrams
Layered Framework for NLNZ
• Started with the question: “What would a national information infrastructure look like for the New Zealand National Library?”
• Layered web services model including portals, portlets, common services and data standards
• NB: Work in progress - many issues to solve
MD Schema
CLIENT (BROWSER)
“Others” - Archive - E-Learn
- E-Gov, etc
National Library NZ © J. Dalziel 1/7/03
Personalised Portal Personalised Portal
PO
RT
LET
SE
RV
ICE
S
DA
TA
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TR
UC
TU
RE
S
AP
PS
CO
MM
ON
SE
RV
ICE
S
D B
Various examples: LMS/ CRM/
Archives
Authentication Authorisation Identity Messaging DRM Security Digital Preservation
Service Description (WSDL) Service Discovery (UDDI) Integration Workflow Etc
Package &Transfer
Run-time & Tracking
Identity-Objects, People,
Organisations, Process
Authorisation Policy
Etc
Other Business Apps
Integrated Library Management
SystemEtcRepository
Access Management(ANON) (ANON)
Library Catalogue
FederatedSearch Etc
Where to next?
• Need Demonstrator projects to trial common services infrastructure– Eg, DEST Systemic Information Infrastructure
• Need high level consideration of impact of web services on existing systems/vendors
• Need to accept there will be many different frameworks before we get it right– This is very hard stuff
• Need careful technical language and dialogue
Where to next?
• Two cautionary tales:– COLIS Integration– SCORM run-time interactions
• Easy to draw the high level, hard to do the detail
• If we could move ahead in time to when we have it all sorted and look back to today - how much have we solved so far?– 5-10%?
Systems Chunks in COLIS Learning Space Application Integration
Content Management
Library E-Services
E-Reserve
E-Journals
Integration
Services
Learning Management
Digital Rights Management
Directory Services
Learning Content
Management
Systems Chunks in COLIS Learning Space Application Integration
Content Management
Library E-Services
E-Reserve
E-Journals
Integration
Services
Learning Management
Digital Rights Management
Directory Services
Learning Content
Management
It was easy to drawthe boxes and lines
at a high level, but….
External Suppliers
Course Unit Creator
MultimediaObjects
E-resource Repositories eg :
WebResources
DocumentsE-Journals
Unified Portal inc.Single User Signon ,AccessManagement
People Directories / Authentication Services
Anyone
Content Package Creator
Learning Object/Content PackageRepository
LearningObject/ContentPackage Metadata
XML Query
Create ContentPackage
Author LearningObject/ContentPackage Metadata
ContentManagement
WebContentMetadata Repository
XML Query
Web Content Creator
DR Manager
Digital RightsMetadata
Digital RightsManagement
Learning Managementand DeliveryEnvironment
AuthorLearningUnits
Learner
WebContentMetadata Repository
Z39.50
WebCT
WebMCQ IPR Systems FDi?Out of Scope
Infoseeker
Learning Object MetadataRepository XML Query
E-Resource MetadataRepository XML Z39.50
E-Resource MetadataRepository XML Query
Audit Usage -Digital Rights
Search Gateway & Request/Deliver
FDICA
AuthorLearningObjects
COLIS Phase 1 Industry Participants
External Suppliers
Course Unit Creator
MultimediaObjects
E-resource Repositories eg :
WebResources
DocumentsE-Journals
Unified Portal inc.Single User Signon ,AccessManagement
People Directories / Authentication Services
Anyone
Content Package Creator
Learning Object/Content PackageRepository
LearningObject/ContentPackage Metadata
XML Query
Create ContentPackage
Author LearningObject/ContentPackage Metadata
ContentManagement
WebContentMetadata Repository
XML Query
Web Content Creator
DR Manager
Digital RightsMetadata
Digital RightsManagement
Learning Managementand DeliveryEnvironment
AuthorLearningUnits
Learner
WebContentMetadata Repository
Z39.50
WebCT
WebMCQ IPR Systems FDi?Out of Scope
Infoseeker
Learning Object MetadataRepository XML Query
E-Resource MetadataRepository XML Z39.50
E-Resource MetadataRepository XML Query
Audit Usage -Digital Rights
Search Gateway & Request/Deliver
FDICA
AuthorLearningObjects
COLIS Phase 1 Industry Participants
..but the reality of integrationwas far more complex(and this view is stillgreatly simplified!)
APIAdapter
SCORMAPI
DeliveryService
TrackingService
SequencingService
ContentManagement
Service
LearnerProfilesService
Testing/Assessment
Service
CourseAdministration
Service
LocalContent
Repository
RemoteContent
Repositories
SCORMContent
Packages
Browser(Presentation)
GeneralizedLearning Management
System Model
Selection
Launch
SCORMTracking
Data
SCORMContent
(SCOs & Assets)
APIAdapter
SCORMAPI
DeliveryService
TrackingService
SequencingService
ContentManagement
Service
LearnerProfilesService
Testing/Assessment
Service
CourseAdministration
Service
LocalContent
Repository
RemoteContent
Repositories
SCORMContent
Packages
Browser(Presentation)
GeneralizedLearning Management
System Model
Selection
Launch
SCORMTracking
Data
SCORMContent
(SCOs & Assets)
Many people discussSCORM as if it is easy
to do, but the complexityhidden beneath is not trivial
