Expectations from the JISC Frameworks Initiative

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Expectations from the JISC Frameworks Initiative

• Hilary Dexter

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The JISC Frameworks Programme

• The aim of the Frameworks programme is to
• Develop and evaluate a framework to facilitate
  interoperability across learning, teaching,
  research and their supporting systems.

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Aims and Objectives

• 1. Map existing development activities funded by
  the JISC.
• 2. Identify the key current requirements of a
  common technical framework
• 3. Define the range of services needed to support
  these requirements.
• 4. Identify the gaps in software provision,
  standards and middleware
• 5. Pilot or demonstrate systems and tools
• 6. Identify the sustainability issues related to
  common technical framework
• 7. Identify an agreed set of user groups and
  stakeholders
• 8. Enable the community to make relevant,
  informed choices.

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The Frameworks Programme initial projects

• Framework ScopingThe purpose of the proposed
  study is to collate, analyse, and map JISC
  development activity associated with the main
  frameworks and architecture initiatives. The
  study will produce a visual planning tool that
  supports the JISC in the prioritisation of future
  development activities.
• Sustainability study common services and digital
  infrastructureThis study will examine the issues
  of sustainability of the digital environment with
  particular reference to developments within the
  JISC Information Environment (IE)
• Standards for JISC Development Activity and
  Service InteroperabilityThe aim of this study is
  the production of overarching technical standards
  guidance to support the implementation of ICT
  across the further and higher education sectors
  and to enable interoperability.

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What are JISC setting out to do?

• Become world class provide competitive
  infrastructure and services.
• Manage their portfolio optimise development
  activity.
• Facilitate the road to Service Oriented
  Architecture guide and assist enterprises.
• Integrate across domains bridge across culture,
  language and practice.

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What do JISC mean by framework?

• What are frameworks, architectures, services and
  components?
• What do the three current frameworks look like to
  a potential user?

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Vocabulary
A set of existing glossaries was accessed for
each of the terms that had emerged from the JISC
Domain modelling activity. It was decided that if
a useful definition existed in one of these then
it would be adopted for the scoping study. The
following four key glossaries were identified
for this purpose. UKOLN http//www.ukoln.ac.uk/me
tadata/glossary/ JISC IE http//www.ukoln.ac.uk/
distributed-systems/jisc-ie/arch/glossary/ CETIS
http//www.cetis.ac.uk/encyclopedia W3C
Glossary http//www.w3.org/2003/glossary/
Framework
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Vocabulary Service
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CETIS definitions

• Framework
• A set of models, specifications and patterns that
  provide a common basis for designing
  architectures.
• Architecture
• The design of services and systems to support a
  specific institution, organisation, or
  federations requirements.
• May or may not be derived from a framework.

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JISC Domain Model determining the granularity of
services
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Components and Services
A service is an implementation of a business
function e.g. e-learning provision, collaborative
research, information resource management...
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The Three Current JISC Frameworks
Information Environment
E-Science (Virtual Research)
E-Learning
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What were the Scoping Study Findings?

• Integration across domains
• Toolkits for planning and portfolio management
• Recommendations
• Issues with Requirements

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Different frameworks have different internal
organisation
Issue It is possible to map an item to all the
current frameworks, but different analysts will
map a given item to different places.
Item x
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Mapping to frameworks 3 analysts, 3 frameworks
Highlights show points of agreement between all 3
analysts
Mapping Project Items Across Frameworks
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Domain Modelling for Vocabulary
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The Planning Toolkit
Define a Task (workflow and project management)
Select Planning Activity
Use Combination of Database, Requirements
Analysis, mind maps and UML Repository
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The JISC Planning Use Cases
UseCaseReport
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Process Modelling for Managing Operations
JISC planning and management activity comprises a
series of interlinked end-to-end processes. There
is a need fully to analyse the business processes
in the JISC domain in order to identify the
points at which interventions could be made to
improve planning. At each of these points the
type of documents and information required and
their source tool should be established.
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Recommendations from the Scoping Study

• A study is needed of cross domain mapping of
  framework functional elements which can form the
  basis for convergence of cross domain mapping and
  of planning methods
• A study is needed of cross domain mapping of
  framework functional elements which can form the
  basis for convergence of vocabularies
• An audit is required of the use of functional
  elements in services
• An audit is required of the functional elements
  and the deliverables from JISC projects

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Requirements Issues emerging from the scoping
study

• Services are not in general linked to user
  requirements in the service environment
• Services do not in general offer clear statements
  regarding Functional Elements offered in the form
  of service agreements
• Where service agreements exist it is unclear how
  (and if) these are monitored and fed back into
  the evolution of the service.

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Why push towards SOA now?

• Changing requirements require agility and
  responsiveness
• Need to support multiple variations on processes
  and multimodal delivery
• To be world class it is essential to enhance QoS
• What is happening in other domains?
• What is happening in the eLearning domain around
  the world?

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Sakai So we all got together and drew a unified
picture of the Future
Jan 04
July 04
May 05
Dec 05
Activity Maintenance Transition from
aproject to a community

• Michigan
• CHEF Framework
• CourseTools
• WorkTools
• Indiana
• Navigo Assessment
• Eden Workflow
• Oncourse
• MIT
• Stellar
• Stanford
• CourseWork
• Assessment
• OKI
• OSIDs

• SAKAI 1.0 Release
• Tool Portability Profile
• Framework
• Services-based Portal
• Refined OSIDs implementations
• SAKAI Tools
• Complete CMS
• WorkTools
• Assessment

• SAKAI 2.0 Release
• Tool Portability Profile
• Framework
• Services-based Portal
• SAKAI Tools
• Complete CMS
• Assessment
• Workflow
• Research Tools
• Authoring Tools

"Best of" Refactoring
Activity Ongoing implementation work at local
institution
Primary SAKAI Activity Architecting for JSR-168
Portlets,Refactoring best of features for
tools Conforming tools to Tool Portability Profile
Primary SAKAI Activity Refining SAKAI
Framework,Tuning and conforming additional
tools Intensive community building/training
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Embedding the frameworks

• Moving to an SOA is a cultural change there is
  a migration path to this
• Moving to an SOA is not straightforward
  organisations will need help
• Is cost an issue?

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Transition to SOA
PeopleProceduresRolesBest -PracticesCultureTe
chnology
Planning, Project Management, Training,
Implementation, Monitoring.
MIGRATION
Required Framework to provide Quality Assurance
in the migration to service/ component based
systems
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Getting Ready to use Frameworks

• What skills and resources are required to develop
  for an SOA?
• What processes have to be in place to use a
  service framework?

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The e-Learning Framework (ELF)
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Inside ELF
Clicking on the brick Context
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HORUS a service within the ELF
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Standards Questions for ELF

• To which standards and/or specifications will eLF
  require service developers to conform?
• Does eLF provide an outline/template for an
  applications (services) software architecture?
• Is there an interface specification document for
  eLF services?
• What toolkits/services are available to enable
  operation of services within the eLF framework
  (e.g. registration, location, composition etc.)?
• What services does the development bay offer?
  What is its role?
• How do Horus developers use the development bay?
• Is there a set of criteria available for placing
  the Horus components/services in the eLF
  framework layers?

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Conclusion A Lifecycle Perspective
The eLearning Materials Lifecycle comprises a
series of linked iterative processes. To become
world class the enterprise architecture has to
allow these processes to drive the composition
and choreography of services that are pulled
together from component repositories. This
construction needs to be responsive to changing
requirements and use precise modelling as a key
tool.
Questions?
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Appendix
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The JISC Domain Framework Layers

• Layering represents an ordered grouping of
  functionality, with the application-specific
  located in the upper layers, functionality that
  spans application domains in the middle layers,
  and functionality specific to the deployment
  environment at the lower layers.
• The number and composition of layers is dependent
  upon the complexity of both the problem domain
  and the solution space. For example, the
  collection of technical patterns, utilities and
  mechanisms is separated out as a layer.

Based on RUP Guidelines
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JISC Services
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JISC Programmes and Projects