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IMS Application Profile Guidelines - Overview
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These contents have been obtained from the IMS official Web site and edited for presentation. Please refer to the IMS Web site for additional information on terms of use.
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Each of the present set of IMS learning technology specifications has been driven by requirements (normally expressed as use cases) from a cross-section of potential users of the target specification. A user of a specification in this sense encompasses:
- Vendors of e-Learning platforms, tools, and services wishing to address a need amongst their existing and prospective customers;
- Third-party suppliers of ancillary or related services, e.g. hardware, network services etc.;
- Institutions representing adopting communities;
- Researchers wishing to harness specifications in applied research of next generation tools and services.
The intention has been and remains, to ensure that specifications going through the IMS process are well grounded in established practice and are sufficiently general to meet the needs of a number of distinct users rather than a special case.
Experience of increasing adoption of the specifications across both vertical domains, i.e., K-12, vocational training, higher education, corporate training, basic skills for life, and geographical regions, has made evident a recurring process of adaptation of the specifications to meet the specific needs of each community.
Agencies undertaking this process clearly have a well identified community in mind and have researched the precise needs of that community, in order to both select the sub-set of the specifications required and propose the necessary changes and extensions to meet their needs.
This emerging model for the adoption process is encouraging as it would seem to confirm that the IMS specifications have indeed been kept sufficiently general for them to have broad-based appeal and offer utility across communities. An Application Profile on the other hand, clearly enhances the utility of a specification to a community and, if adhered to, promises greater interoperability between members of that community.
Experience to-date has identified real benefits to be gained from closer collaboration across communities in developing these profiles, particularly in agreeing basic rules to be followed, and adopting a consistent format for documenting each Application Profile:
- Agreeing a consistent set of rules for constructing a profile will bound the changes that can be made thus ensuring greater interoperability across conformant Application Profiles;
- Providing consistent documentation of Application Profiles will enable vendors to more easily build products and services that span multiple communities with simple configuration settings for localization;
- The growing number of publicly documented Application Profiles will allow subsequent adopting communities to select and reuse elements of existing profiles, rather than develop from first principles;
- Ultimately, providing strongly typed, machine readable definitions of these Application Profiles will enable runtime context negotiation between domains to facilitate data exchange and interoperability across communities.
The IMS Application Profile Guidelines define a process for taking one or more source specifications and refining these to create a tighter and more cohesive specification (i.e. the profile) that meets the requirements of a specific target community. Crucially, a well defined profile should be precise about what must be supported, thus offering implementers a clear and unambiguous target for them to achieve conformance.IMS GLC Profiles Web Site |
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These contents have been obtained from the IMS official Web site and edited for presentation. Please refer to the IMS Web site for additional information on terms of use.
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IMS Application Profile Guidelines contain two parts:
- Part 1 - Management Overview
- Part 2 - Technical Manual
The documents are offered as a guideline, based upon the experience of a number of user communities in adopting and implementing the specifications, in the hope that their experience will be useful to others facing the same issues which they have had to work through with their users and suppliers.
The Management Overview describes what an application profile is in the context of the IMS specifications and the benefits to be gained from undertaking such an exercise - namely more closely meeting the needs of the target user community whilst harnessing the specifications to aid integration and enhance interoperability between tools, products and services which vendors would supply to that community. Guidance is offered on the key factors for deciding whether or not to embark upon a profiling exercise and a process outlined for how to proceed with such an activity. Conformance issues around an application profile are briefly discussed, as are technology and implementation issues beyond the scope covered by the specifications.
The Technical Manual describes, from a technical point of view, the profiling of specifications, primarily those developed by the IMS Global Learning Consortium. However, the approach defined in the manual could also be applied to specifications developed by other organizations. In addition to evaluating the methods for defining an application profile, this document provides a means to represent changes to a specification in an XML form. The manual document also describes a way in which profiles could be tested for conformance purposes, but this is only provided as a suggestion rather than as a normative specification for conformance testing. |
IMS Conformance Program
In order to facilitate true interoperability, IMS GLC is designating a specific approach to developing profiles that will ensure the highest degree of usability across communities. Profiles developed using this approach will be designated as "IMS GLC Validated". IMS GLC Validated signifies that this profile has followed the process designated by IMS GLC, has been validated by IMS GLC as a valid profile, and therefore should be readily usable by other IMS community members.
The IMS approach to profiling has been encoded in the IMS SchemaProf Tool, which now forms an integral component for working with the IMS specifications. The SchemaProf tool produces a set of derived schemas which define the profile, along with additional constraints and rules (expressed in schematron) which implementations must observe.
Anyone can use the SchemaProf Tool to create a candidate profile of one or more IMS specifications. To encourage broader adoption and usage, these candidate profiles can be submitted to the IMS Profile Registry where they can be shared with the community under a royalty-free license. Profiles which gain widespread adoption and so drive greater interoperability, may be selected to become accredited profiles, in which case conformance tests and a conformance mark will be offered to aid implementers and give recognition to those who achieve conformance. |
Terms of use
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These contents have been obtained from the IMS official Web site and edited for presentation. Please refer to the IMS Web site for additional information on terms of use.
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General Information
Title: IMS Application Profile Guidelines
Version: 1.0
Editor: Kevin Riley
Status: Final
Release Date: 01 August 2005
IMS Application Profile Guidelines contain two parts:- Part 1 - Management Overview (available in HTML): This document is not a formal IMS specification. Its purpose is to act as an aid to adopters of IMS specs in drafting up an Application Profile, detailing how they are using the specifications for their implementation. As such, the Application Profile has value as an aid to implementation across a community.
- Part 2 - Technical Manual (available in HTML): This document is not a formal IMS specification. Its purpose is to act as an aid to adopters of IMS specs in drafting up an Application Profile, detailing how they are using the specifications for their implementation. As such, the Application Profile has value simply as an aid to implementation across a community, but can also be used by that community to identify their test acceptance criteria for conformance purposes.
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