|
Please wait ......
IMS Enterprise Services - Overview
Terms of use
X
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.
Print
Scope
The IMS Enterprise Services specification is the definition of how systems manage the exchange of information that describes people, groups and memberships within the context of learning. The Enterprise Services specification is constructed following the recommendations documented in the IMS Abstract Framework (IAF). This means that this specification is based upon the concepts of:- Interoperability - Enterprise Services focuses on the exchange of information between Enterprise systems. There are no assumptions in the specification on how the data is managed within the Enterprise systems.
- Service-oriented - Enterprise Services defines the exchange of information in terms of the services being supplied by the collaboration of the systems. This takes the form of Person Management Services, Group Management Services and Membership Management Services.
- Component-based - the set of services will be supplied such that they can be combined to form a range of services. The Person Management Services, Group Management Services and Membership Management Services can be combined to provide other services and the Enterprise Service will have other services added to it in later releases.
- Layering - the Enterprise Service and its constituent services (Person, Groups and Membership) are part of the Application Services layer.
- Behaviors and Data Models - the Enterprise Services are defined in terms of their behaviors and data models. The behaviors cause changes in the state of the data model and the state of the data model will only be altered as a result of a clearly defined behavior.
- Multiple Bindings - the Enterprise Services information model is to be defined using the Unified Modelling Language (UML). This enables reliable mapping of the information model into a range of different bindings. The bindings of immediate importance are to the Web Services Description Language (WSDL).
- Adoption - the Enterprise Services are based upon the original Enterprise specification data model. While there are significant changes the underlying data model has been maintained and the core Person, Group and Membership structures remain.
|
Purpose
The IMS Enterprise Services specification is based on and supersedes the IMS Enterprise v1.1 specification. The original Enterprise specification was based upon the description of the data model for the information to be exchanged between communicating enterprise systems. The Enterprise Services specification extends this work by adding a series of behavioral models that define how the data models are to be manipulated. These behavioral models are described using the Unified Modelling Language (UML).
The Enterprise Services Specification is to be implemented using a Web Services infrastructure based upon a SOAP/http transport mechanism. These web service bindings are detailed in the corresponding service binding documents.
IMPORTANT: The LIS v2.0 specification supersedes the IMS GLC Enterprise Services v1.0 specification.IMS Enterprise Services Web Page |
Terms of use
X
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.
Print
The IMS Enterprise Services specification identifies a set of abstract services to manage the exchange of information that describes people, groups and memberships within the context of learning.
A schematic representation of the services identified in the IMS Enterprise Services specification is given in Figure 1. Only those services that are shown in grey are defined in the specification. The core enterprise services are:- Person Management Service - This service encapsulates the methods for the management of information about individuals who are undertaking some form of study and/or group related activity e.g., they are members of a particular course. The person record is designed to be a data model for all of the personal information to be exchanged about an individual.
-
- Group Management Service - This service encapsulates the methods for the management of information about a collection of objects related to learning activities or individuals. The group is a generic container used to define any set of related activities e.g., a tutor group, a class, a curriculum, etc. There is no restriction on how the Group and sub-group structures can be used with respect to containing other groups, persons, etc.
- Membership Management Service - This service encapsulates the methods for the management of information about the membership of people or groups in groups. A Group or Person can be a member of any number of groups.
Figure 1. Enterprise Services domain model.
|
|
| Two other Enterprise Services have been identified: Gradebook Management Service and Course Catalog Management Service. These will not be defined as part of the V1.0 information model but may be included in later releases. |
Terms of use
X
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.
Print
Terms of use
X
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.
Print
The Context for Enterprise Services Conformance
Conformance is based upon the following considerations:
- Nature of system - whether the system is a consumer, provider or combined supplied of the service;
- Level of compliance - the degree to which the system claims it conforms to the specification.
|
Terms of use
X
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.
Print
With Internet vCard Specification
The vCard specification allows the open exchange of Personal Data Interchange (PDI) information typically found on traditional paper business cards. The specification defines a format for an electronic business card, or vCard. The vCard specification is suitable as an interchange format between applications or systems. The format is defined independent of the particular method used to transport it. The transport for this exchange might be a file system, point-to-point public switched telephone networks, wired-network transport, or some form of unwired transport. The vCard has direct application to the way users utilize the Internet network. The vCard can be used to forward personal data in an electronic mail message. The numerous forms a user of the WWW fills out on a homepage can also be automated using the vCard. The Internet Mail Consortium is working with the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) to complete work on an extension to the Internet MIME-based electronic mail standard to allow for this capability. An XML binding of the vCard specification has produced a DTD [vCard, 98] and this has been used to inform the development of the IMS Enterprise Person structure. |
With Internet2 eduPerson
In February 2001the joint Internet2(R) and EDUCAUSE working group announced the release of the 'eduPerson' specification for services that provide seamless access to network-accessible information regardless of where or how the original information is stored. The eduPerson specification provides a set of standard higher-education attributes for an enterprise directory, which facilitate inter-institutional access to applications and resources across the higher education community. The EDUCAUSE/Internet2 eduPerson task force has the mission of defining a Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) object class that includes widely-used person attributes in higher education. |
|