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IMS Content Packaging - Summary
Terms of use
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Terms of use
These contents have been obtained from the IMS web site and edited for presentation. Please refer to the IMS web site for additional information on terms of use.
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The scope of the IMS Content Packaging specification is focused on defining interoperability between systems that wish to import, export, aggregate and disaggregate Packages of content.
Thus, the "root" element of the specification is the Package. A Package represents a unit of usable (and reusable) content. This may be part of a course that has instructional relevance outside of a course organization and can be delivered independently, as an entire course or as a collection of courses. A Package must be able to stand-alone; that is, it must contain all the information needed to use the contents for learning when it has been unpacked. |
IMS Content Package
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| The IMS Package can be seen as a "logical directory", which includes a specially named XML file, any XML control documents it references (such as a DTD or XSD file), and any sub-directories containing the actual physical resources to be encapsulated. The special XML file is called the IMS Manifest file. It is used to describe, in XML, the encapsulated content and its organization. Once a Package has been incorporated into a single file for transportation (e.g., .zip, .jar, .cab), it is called a Package Interchange File. |
A manifest contains the following sub-elements:
- metadata - (optional) this meta-data describes the manifest that contains it. Commonly used meta-data would include elements like title, description, keywords, a contributor's role, a content's purpose (e.g., educational objective, skill level), and copyright information. Meta-data elements should be drawn first from IMS Meta-Data v1.2.1 Specification (the latest version). Any meta-data elements not found in the IMS Meta-Data specification could then be included via an XML namespace in a manifest's meta-data element(s). All meta-data elements must be defined in a DTD or XSD, which are declared at the top of the IMS Manifest file and are included with imsmanifest.xml at the root of a Package's internal file structure.
- organizations - (required) contains zero, one, or multiple descriptions of the static organization of the content so that resources within the Package can be moved to create one or multiple organizations of content (such as course outlines). It is left to the discretion of content producers to decide whether to describe or not describe the organization of a course's resources. If content producers choose to provide one or more descriptions of a course's organization, they must also specify one as the default. The current Content Packaging DTD requires a single organizations element as a child of the manifest element. If content producers do not need an organizations section in the manifest, then it must appear as an empty element to satisfy the control rules expressed in the controlling documents (DTD, XSD). Also, only one organizations element is allowed within each manifest element. The current specification defines an organization sub-element as one that uses a hierarchical organization; however, other ways of describing the organizational structure or content (such as conditional/programmatic) are permitted.
- resources - (required) includes references to all of the resources needed in order to view the content as specified in the organizations element. References may either be made internally or externally of a Package to both relative and absolute identifiers. For example, a reference to an external URL is permitted without having to include that resource as part of the Package Interchange File. Resources may also contain a metadata element for each content item referenced. Only one resources element is allowed within the top-level manifest element.
- manifest - (optional) specifies zero or more (sub)Manifests. Nested manifest elements specify how content may be reliably aggregated or disaggregated into other Packages.
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