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IMS Enterprise - Overview
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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Scope
IMS Global Learning Consortium
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The IMS Enterprise specification describes data structures that are used to provide interoperability of Internet-based Instructional Management systems with other Enterprise systems used to support the operations of an organization.
This specification is being developed by the IMS Global Consortium (http://www.imsglobal.org). |
Purpose
The objective of the IMS Enterprise specification is to define a standardized set of structures that can be used to exchange data between different systems. These structures provide the basis for standardized data bindings that allow software developers and implementers to create Instructional Management processes that interoperate across systems developed independently by various software developers. The major classes of Enterprise applications supported by this model are Training Administration, Student Administration, Library Management, and Human Resource systems.
The scope of the IMS Enterprise specification is focused on defining interoperability between systems residing within the same enterprise or organization. The documents comprising the IMS Enterprise specification are not targeted at solving the issues of data integrity, communication, overall security, and others that are inherent when investigating cross-enterprise data exchange. |
Terms of use
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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 Enterprise Specification is focused on defining interoperability between systems residing within the same enterprise or organization.
A schematic representation of the core data objects exchanged using the IMS Enterprise Specification is given in figure.
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The principal IMS Enterprise data objects
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The core objects are:- Person. The individuals who are undertaking some form of study and/or group related activity e.g., they are members of a particular course. The personal structure only contains information that is used to identify the individual and that is needed in learning systems. It is not designed to be a data repository for all of the personal information about an individual;
- Group. 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.
- Group Membership. The membership structure is used to define the members of a Group. A member can be a Person or another Group. A Group or Person can be a member of any number of groups.
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| An Enterprise XML instance is designed to contain any number of Person, Group and Membership structures but the order in which these can occur are limited to all of the Person objects, followed by all of the Group objects followed by all of the Membership objects. |
Terms of use
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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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General Information
Title: “IMS Enterprise”
Version: 1.1
Release Date: 1 July 2002
Status: Final Specification
Authors: Colin Smythe, Geoff Collier, Chris Etesse, and Wayne Veres
The electronic version is available at IMS Enterprise Web site. |
It is comprised of three documents:- IMS Enterprise Information Model. This document describes the data structures that are used to provide interoperability between Internet-based Enterprise systems (HTML)
- IMS Enterprise XML Binding Specification. This document describes how to encode the enterprise objects in XML and provides the corresponding XML schema (HTML)
- IMS Enterprise Best Practices and Implementation Guide. This document provides an overview and describes how the IMS Enterprise Information Model and XML Binding can be applied to specific types of interoperability scenarios (HTML)
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Tracking of Changes
This version is fully backwards compatible with the V1.01 specification. The core amendments for this version are:- Support for a number of the proprietary extensions used to extend interoperability for the v1.01 release. These extensions cover the <person>, <group> and <membership> data objects;
- Support for multiple <sourcedid> and <userid> structures. Password support has been added to the <userid> structure;
- Provision of enumerated non-numeric vocabularies. V1.0 uses numeric-based vocabularies. Wherever possible the vocabularies are to be extended to reflect common usage;
- 'Internationalization' of the core data objects including: (i) Name structure to support non-English conventions; and (ii) Telephony and electronic contact numbers to be extended.
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Terms of use
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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 original IMS Enterprise V1.0 Specification was released in September 1999 with the errata V1.01 release following in January 2000. |
Terms of use
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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 IMS Enterprise Specification is related to several other IMS specifications, both complete and in-progress. This specification is intended to be consistent with these other initiatives wherever possible, in order to reduce redundancy and confusion between specifications. The related specifications are:- IMS Meta-data Specification. The IMS Enterprise Specification recommends the usage, where appropriate, of the IMS Meta-data definitions to support the meta-data entities to be used in the context of the Enterprise objects.
- IMS Learner Information Package (LIP) specification defines the structures used to support the exchange of personal profile data.
- IMS Content Packaging Specification. Multiple IMS Enterprise XML instances could be packaged using the IMS Content Packaging mechanisms.
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| In addition the specification is related with IMS LIP and vCard specification. |
Terms of use
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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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It is not mandatory for a vendor to support every feature of the IMS Enterprise specification, but a vendor must detail its level of support with a "Conformance Statement". Compliance is represented by: - Conformance summary. This is a summary that shows, in colloquial terms, the capabilities of a particular implementation with respect to the IMS Enterprise Specification;
- Interoperability Statement. This is a detailed technical checklist that identifies all of the feature capabilities of the implementation in terms of the IMS Enterprise Specification functions.
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| Vendors claiming conformance shall be able to read and write valid instances of the Enterprise data as defined by the XML Schema including proprietary extensions where applicable. They must provide a "Conformance Summary", detailing their level of conformance. |
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