Resources: standards and architectures

(n.) A design. The term architecture can refer to either hardware or software, or to a combination of hardware and software. The architecture of a system always defines its broad outlines, and may define precise mechanisms as well.

An open architecture allows the system to be connected easily to devices and programs made by other manufacturers. Open architectures use off-the-shelf components and conform to approved standards. A system with a closed architecture, on the other hand, is one whose design is proprietary, making it difficult to connect the system to other systems.

The IMS Global Learning Consortium develops and promotes the adoption of open technical specifications for interoperable learning technology. Several IMS specifications have become worldwide de facto standards for delivering learning products and services. IMS specifications and related publications are made available to the public from www.imsglobal.org.

Software architecture is a coherent set of abstract patterns guiding the design of each aspect of a larger software system.

Software architecture underlies the practice of building computer software. In the same way as a building architect sets the principles and goals of a building project as the basis for the draftsman's plans, so too, a software architect sets out the software architecture as a basis for actual system design specifications, per the requirements of the client.

# In software, the word component has an emerging meaning generalizing the idea of a software pattern, software object, software framework and software architecture. software componentry can be any of these. See also: component software theory, software component. A standard way to implement a component is as a class object (object-oriented programming)

ABSTRACT

This paper discusses ways that shape attitudes to technology from a socio-cultural perspective. Differing attitudes are explored in relation to the cultures of education and ICT use in education. The role and development of the spreadsheet is taken as an example of a "cultural tool" and its relevance to education is questioned. A way of developing ICT embedded in a educational cultures by adopting interoperable standards for ICT in education is developed, with illustration from the European Commission funded project REM.

Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) is a collaborative effort to harness the power of information technologies to modernize structured learning. ADL, therefore, employs a structured, adaptive, collaborative effort between the public and private sectors to develop the standards, tools and learning content for the learning environment of the future.
 
The vision of the ADL Initiative is to provide access to the highest-quality learning and performance aiding that can be tailored to individual needs and delivered cost-effectively, anytime and anywhere.
 
For additional information on the ADL Initiative refer to the ADL FAQs section.

Representational State Transfer (REST) is a collection of principles for managing information over a computer network like the world wide web. The term originated in a 2000 doctoral dissertation about the web written by Roy Fielding, one of the principal authors of the HTTP protocol specification, and has quickly passed into widespread use in the networking community.

While REST originally referred to a collection of architectural principles (described below), people now often use the term in a looser sense to describe any simple web-based interface that uses XML and HTTP without the extra abstractions of RPC-based approaches like the web services SOAP protocol. Strictly speaking, it is possible (though not common) to design web service systems in accordance with Fielding's REST principles, and it is possible to design simple XML+HTTP interfaces that do not follow REST principles, so these two different uses of REST cause some confusion in technical discussions.

Systems that follow Fielding's REST principles are often referred to as RESTful; REST's most zealous advocates call themselves RESTafarians.

Something proprietary is something exclusively owned by someone, often with connotations that it is exclusive and cannot be used by other parties without negotiations. It may specifically mean that something is covered by one or more patents, as in proprietary technology. It can also mean that the copyright is used in a way that restricts the users' freedoms.

Increasingly, proprietary architectures are seen as a disadvantage. Consumers prefer standardized and open architectures, which allow them to mix and match products from different manufacturers.

Standards subcategories and terms. Dictionary Definitions for Words in the Standards Category

What is software architecture?

There is no standard, universally-accepted definition of the term, “software architecture,” although there is no shortage of definitions, either. The following sections attempt to capture an appropriate cross section of what is meant by software architecture. The first section includes definitions from recent works on software architecture. The second section provides the "Classic Definitions," a brief tour through some of the more important or influential ones. These definitions are followed by additional definitions from articles taken from our software architecture bibliography. Lastly, definitions are listed that Web visitors have suggested (complete list, new listings only).

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

OpenDoc was a multi-platform software componentry framework standard for compound documents, inspired by the Xerox Star system and intended as an alternative to Microsoft's object linking and embedding (OLE).

Open source means when sources of information, code, pictures, maps, authors, and everything related are all publicly viewable and openly modifiable.

When used as an adjective, the term is hyphenated: "Apache is open-source software"; otherwise, when used as a noun, there is no hyphen: "open source".

Open standards are publicly available specifications for achieving a specific task. By allowing anyone to use the standard, they increase compatibility between various hardware and software components since anyone with the technical know-how and the necessary equipment to implement solutions can build something that works together with those of other vendors.

Many standards are proprietary rather than being open, and must be licensed from the organization that owns the copyright for the standard before obtaining a copy. Being an open standard also does not necessarily imply that no licenses to patent rights are needed to use the standard or that such licenses are available for free. For example, the standards published by the major internationally-recognized standards bodies such as the ITU, ISO, and IEC are ordinarily considered open, but may require patent licensing fees for implementation.

An architecture whose specifications are public. This includes officially approved standards as well as privately designed architectures whose specifications are made public by the designers. The opposite of open is closed or proprietary.

The great advantage of open architectures is that anyone can design add-on products for it. By making an architecture public, however, a manufacturer allows others to duplicate its product. Linux, for example, is considered open architecture because its source code is available to the public for free. In contrast, DOS, Windows, and the Macintosh architecture and operating system have been predominantly closed. Many lawsuits have been filed over the use of these architectures in clone machines. For example, IBM issued a Cease and Desist order, followed by a battery of lawsuits, when COMPAQ built its first computers.

At some point, probably when an attempt made by Fujitsu to standardize Fresco following a Request for Proposal by the Object Management Group failed (it was IBM and Apple who won with their OpenDoc architecture), Fresco was officially dropped. It still lived on for another couple of years, as an Open Source project, maintained by Thomas Hiller. The last release is from 1998.
At about that time I joined the Berlin project and suggested that we aggressively reuse Fresco's architecture and design. For the last three years I have been doing just that: I reimplemented ideas from Fresco in the context of Berlin, on top of low level libraries such as GGI, using a real (and independent) ORB, etc.

This site is the official home for documents, presentations and other resources related to the CanCore Learning Resource Metadata Initiative.
CanCore enhances the ability of educators, researchers and students in Canada and around the world to search and locate material from online collections of educational resources. CanCore is based on and fully compatible with the IEEE Learning Object Metadata standard and the IMS Learning Resource Meta-data specification.
The CanCore Initiative is currently funded by the e-Learning Marketplace Strategy Group of Industry Canada's e-Learning Directorate and supported by TeleUniversite and Athabasca University.

It is worth noting that ARIADNE was also involved in the negotiation - with the IMS Project - of IEEE Learning Objects Metadata...

Project Name:

ARIADNE II

Research Area:

Innovative Tools and Applications

Main Results:

An international System of pedagogically-indexed knowledge pools which facilitate courseware authoring. A set of document-specific authoring tools

Timescale:

1.1.96 to 31.12.99

Budget:

ECU 5,000,000

Target Users:

Producers of Pedagogical Material; Faculty; Producers of Corporate Training Material; Corporate Trainers; Students; Open and Distance Learners; Researchers

User Benefits:

Access to structured online teaching materials; advanced courseware creation and editing; courseware sharing and re-use

Technologies Involved:

Conceptual analysis and breakdown of text; use of standard Internet-based telematics systems; use of novel bespoke authoring tools for simulations and other courseware

Innovative Aspects:

Combining more effective, organisation-supporting learning scenarios; new approach to collaboration for authors of pedagogical material

Keywords:

Knowledge Pool System, Courseware Authoring; Targeted Curricula: Open & Distance training

The hundreds of member companies of the Object Management Group produce and maintain a suite of specifications that support distributed, heterogeneous software development projects from analysis and design through coding, deployment, runtime, and maintenance. Here's an overview:

REM was the project that got me started in web environments for education, along with Martin Owen (now at NESTA Futurelab) and Oleg Liber (now at CETIS).

REM takes a unique approach to tele-learning by creating a rich multimedia environment to support learning through collaboration, interaction and conversation. Implicit in REM’s view of education and training is a belief in constructivist principles of learning for students, teachers and professionals.

The REM project enables learners to collaborate closely by supporting the exchange of a wide variety of experiences and resources with advanced telematics.

Project Name:

REM

Research Area:

Tertiary-Level Education and Vocational Training

Main Results:

Multimedia Database of Learning Tools; Telematics Learning Environment; Collaborative Learning Tools

Timescale:

1.1.96 to 1.4.99

Budget:

ECU 1,695,032

Target Users:

Teachers in Training; Teachers in Service Courses and Nursery Staff

User Benefits:

Participation in collaborative learning across Europe on Erasmus/Comenius-like activities at lower cost and with greater ease

Technologies Involved:

Internet; World Wide Web; Computer Conference Systems; Object Oriented Databases; Modems; Local Area Networks, Videophones and CD-ROM

Innovative Aspects:

Widely-accessible, scalable and seamlessly-integrated learning environments

Keywords:

Collaborative Multimedia-based WWW Networks; Integrated Learning Environments

Author: Dave Winer
Posted: 6/14/1999; 7:58:47 PM
What is XML-RPC? It's a spec and a set of implementations that allow software running on disparate operating systems, running in different environments to make procedure calls over the Internet.

It's remote procedure calling using HTTP as the transport and XML as the encoding. XML-RPC is designed to be as simple as possible, while allowing complex data structures to be transmitted, processed and returned.

CORBA® BASICS
If you want to understand CORBA, this is the place to start!
You can either read straight down the page, or click on a question to go straight to a topic that interests you.

CORBA is the acronym for Common Object Request Broker Architecture, OMG's open, vendor-independent architecture and infrastructure that computer applications use to work together over networks. Using the standard protocol IIOP, a CORBA-based program from any vendor, on almost any computer, operating system, programming language, and network, can interoperate with a CORBA-based program from the same or another vendor, on almost any other computer, operating system, programming language, and network.

Innovative use of telematic tools to support a professional community of practice, Mike Malloch and Graham Attwell, Online EDUCA Berlin, 2001

I've been meaning to do some serious writing on the subject of why "small and loose" standards are the right path for many developments we would like to see in software for education. I did manage to write a little about it in the draft report on standards and architectures, but there is so much left to say...

I'm delighted to see that a new organisation has been formed which appears to take this as a founding principle: Microformats.org

Microformats are a set of simple, open data formats built upon existing and widely adopted standards. Instead of throwing away what works today, microformats intend to solve simpler problems first by adapting to current behaviors and usage patters (e.g. XHTML, blogging).

From the new site's "Learn more about microformats" page:

Designed for humans first and machines second, microformats are a set of simple, open data formats built upon existing and widely adopted standards. Instead of throwing away what works today, microformats intend to solve simpler problems first by adapting to current behaviors and usage patters (e.g. XHTML, blogging).

This is so good I have to quote it more fully :o):

the microformats principles

• solve a specific problem
• start as simple as possible
  • solve simpler problems first
  • make evolutionary improvements
• design for humans first, machines second
  • be presentable and parsable
  • visible data is better than invisible metadata
  • adapt to current behaviors and usage patterns, e.g. (X)HTML, blogging
• reuse building blocks from widely adopted standards
  • semantic, meaningful (X)HTML. See SemanticXHTMLDesignPrinciples for more details.
  • existing microformats
  • well established schemas from interoperable RFCs
• modularity / embeddability
  • design to be reused and embedded inside existing formats and microformats
• enable and encourage decentralized development, content, services
  • explicitly encourage "spirit of the Web"