I work for a company that mainly assembles and interprets educational
statistics, and was wondering if anyone here is in a related situation and
would have a use for a library which implements the Agent functionality of
the SIF (School Interoperability Framework) standard. Ideally I’d like to
work with others on a Ruby Licensed reference implementation.
The Framework (www.sifinfo.org/spec.html) defines routers (ZIS servers) and
SIF ‘agents’ which allow vendors and schools, districts, or sections within
schools (e.g. library, bus scheduling, transcript, test scoring) to
communicate via XML over a secure connection, allowing all connected
systems to be updated in real time when an element is added or changed.
While this is a neat idea for education, it could of course be adapted to
handle other types of XML data. This might be of interest to anyone who
regularly has to parse data from a client and wishes there was a secure and
automatic way to just pull it from their database, accounting software,
etc.
I am just posting to see if there is any interest or grounds for discussion
for this. Post back or email me privately if you like. If you are using
Ruby for education and aren’t necessarily interested in SIF, I’d still like
to hear back.
–Gabriel Emerson
Evaluation Software Publishing