O.K.I. launched its new community site this week using Segue v2, the curricular content management system developed at Middlebury College that makes extensive use of the open service interface definitions (OSIDs).

"We are very pleased that we could develop O.K.I.'s own community site with Segue v2, which in turn has been designed from the ground up using the architectural model of O.K.I.'s Open Service Interface Definitions." said Jeff Merriman, Associate Direcfor for the Office of Educational Innovation and Technology at MIT and Executive Director of O.K.I.  "We are indeed 'eating our own dogfood'."

This new version of Segue is built on top of Harmoni, an application framework also developed at Middlebury that includes implementations of nearly all the OSIDs.  "By abstracting out common services such as authentication, authorization, hierarchy, repository, ID and so on into a framework, we are better able to reuse these implementations across applications" explains Alex Chapin, Middlebury's Principal Curricular Technologist.

Segue v2 allows for collaborative editing, commenting and versioning of its managed assets, using fine-grained authorizations that enable various sections of the site to be managed by O.K.I.'s core contributors and affiliates, while other areas are open for public comment.  In particular, the Conversations area has been created as a place to better engage the global community of developers and technology decision makers around various issues and ideas related to interoperability and educational technology.

In addition to the new O.K.I. main web site, Segue v2 will also be used for a new community site targeting the vital and growing community that has eveloped around OSID-based Repository interoperabiltiy.  This site will be available soon.

Please visit http://www.okiproject.org to experience O.K.I. on Segue v2 on O.K.I.

 

Last November a number of O.K.I. OSID developers gathered in Cambridge Massachusetts for an OSID V3 "Deep-Dive" meeting to review the current V3 draft and discuss issues to address and potential projects moving forward.  One of the projects discussed, and identified as an important direction by many of those assembled, is the development of an enterprise service bus based on the V3 OSIDS.  The Open University of Catalonia has already proven the viability and value of such a bus implementation of a number of the V2 OSIDs as part of the Campus Project 

Mark Norton, of Nolaria Consulting,  volunteered to start up a new project group to further explore an OSID V3 Service Bus.  Anyone is invited to join the Google group at http://groups.google.com/group/osid-service-bus.  

This discussion group is open to everyone interested in contributing or just tracking the conversation.  If you are interested please join the group. A Google account in required to join this group.  The group will be documenting any code in the group wiki, track issues with the issue manager, and save prototype code in the source control system (subversion).  Released code will be cross posted to Assembla.

The goal is to build a standard way to make OSID requests, across a network, across multiple programming languages and potentially coordinating service requests across multiple elements of enterprise infrastructure.  Such systems are commonly referred to as *enterprise* service busses. Usually, such ESB system uses web services, CORBA, RMI, AJAX, REST, message protocols, etc. to send a request to one or more service providers (that may be local or remote).  The provider creates a response that is communicated back to the requesting application (or service).

The ESB hides details how communication happens, where the service providers live, etc.  It can also provide commonly used features like publish/subscribe messaging, broadcast messages, point to point messaging, journaling, transactionality, etc.  The OSID Service Bus (OSB) project proposes to first explore the ideas using some simple test cases (login, get asset, etc) hopefully using two or more languages.  The project also plan to investigate existing ESB open source offerings to see what might be adopted as the basis for an OSB platform.

If you have specific questions about the project, please contact markjnorton@earthlink.net.

The Open Knowledge Initiative (O.K.I.) project at MIT is excited to announce that Common Need of Washington, D.C. is providing hosting services for the new O.K.I. web presence.   By doing so, Common Need is providing a valuable service to the O.K.I. community.

"Common Need is pleased to host the community website for the Open Knowledge Initiative (O.K.I.) project as part of our on-going support for this important effort to bring open interoperability standards to the world of educational systems development."  said Stuart Sim, Chief Technology Officer of Common Need

Common Need is engaged in developing systems using open standards such as O.K.I. for integrating campus based systems in a cost effective manner and laying the ground work for true Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) platforms. An Open Systems Integration approach is essential in lowering the system integration in that no connection adapter is ever written more than once. The O.K.I. repository of systems adapters allows us to pass on integration savings directly to our customers and empower them to spend on higher value services for their campus.

About Common Need, Inc.
Common Need, Inc. (http://commonneed.com) develops and markets mission-critical enterprise integration and social learning software that enable the creation of custom learning environments. Our flagship products are the plugjam platform and plugjam application suite. Common Need's clients include college, universities, schools, as well as other organizations looking to deliver education content. Founded in 2006, Common Need is focused on improving the ways people leverage technology to learn and providing developers with indispensable innovation so they too can advance the state-of-the art of learning. Common Need is headquartered in Washington, D.C.