The eFramework for Education and Research and its relationship to Enterprise Architecture

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The e-Framework forEducation and Research and
its relationship to Enterprise Architecture

• Simon Porter

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Presentation Purpose

• The eFramework is a framework for collaboratively
  describing how systems at a service level
  interoperate in teaching and research.
• How does the framework work?
• Why does it matter?
• What is the relationship between the eFramework
  and Enterprise Architecture?

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Overview

• Overview
• Some observations about Enterprise Architecture,
  Standards and Service oriented approaches.
• About the eFramework
• eFramework in action.
• Defining a Research Project Repository Service.

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Some Observations about higher education industry
trends by Christopher J. Mackie

• Christopher J. Mackie
• Associate Program Officer
• The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

Observations about institutional trends in higher
education. IDEA 2007 Presentation
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Institutional Trends
9-10 October 2007
Some Observations by Christopher J. Mackie
Christopher J. Mackie Associate Program
Officer The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

• Internal IT capacity is declining
• Demand is increasing faster than budget
• Staff are aging labor markets are inhospitable
• Software development maintenance capacity is
  vanishing vendor dependence is increasing
• Enterprise software complexity is increasing
  beyond institutional competence Home-brew
  enterprise software is growing impossible to
  build or maintain

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The bottom line (of this presentation)

• The Bottom Line
• So there is increasing pressure on Information
  services divisions to support Research and
  Education systems.
• A General Question
• Are there patterns of behaviour that we can adopt
  together that help progress the goals of
  education and research more effectively?
• To help reduce complexity?
• To increase our flexibility in responding to
  business requirements?
• How do we incorporate these patterns of behaviour
  within our approaches to EA?

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• Strategy 1
• When building an Enterprise Architecture, reuse/
  build upon as many artifacts from industry and
  community as possible.
• Frameworks
• Standards
• Business Process Models
• Data models

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• Strategy 2
• Start thinking about consolidating services at an
  enterprise level

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Service oriented approach (soa)
SERVICES
Services need well defined interfaces so all
components can access them.
Scott Wilson - CETIS
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Service oriented approach (soa)
UI
UI
UI
LMS
?
SIS
New Super LMS
OMS
PMS
CMS
LDAP
Identity Directory
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• Strategy 3
• Build your services architecture in collaboration
  with the broader Community

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Service oriented approach has community
foundations

• A services orientated approach is inherently
  community focused.
• Interfaces to successful services are by their
  nature, standards based, or at least grounded in
  common community practice

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University 1
University 2
University 1
University 3
University 4
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• So is there a way we can work together to help
  define these servcies?
• Build on the knowledge of others?

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Back to the central theme of this presentation

• Are there patterns of behaviour that we can adopt
  together that help progress the goals of
  education and research most effectively?
• To help reduce complexity?
• To increase our flexibility in responding to
  business requirements?

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The eFramework

• About the e-Framework for Education and Research

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What is the eFramework?

• Background
• Enabling meaningful conversations and
  collaboration across boundaries
• DEST / JISC e-Framework for Education and
  Research
• Now DEST, JISC (UK), MoE (NZ), SURF (NL)

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What is it?

• Goal
• technical interoperability
• in education and research
• by improving community understanding of common
  services and standards
• Principles
• service oriented approach (soa)
• open standards
• community involvement
• incremental development

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What is it?

• Sure but what are the e-Framework outputs?
• a knowledge base

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e-Framework Components

• service usage models (SUMs)
• service genres
• service expressions
• e-F Descriptions of Standards (eFDOS)
• CORE service usage models (SUMs)

Reference

• business processes modeling
• service implementations
• service instances

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Service Genres
SEARCH
AUTHENICATE
ANNOTATE
PERSONALISE
RESOLVE
SCHEDULE
SIMULATE
IDENTIFY
HARVEST
AUTHORISE
MESSAGING
REGISTER
ALERT
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Service Expressions
SEARCH
AUTHENICATE
ANNOTATE
PERSONALISE
RESOLVE
SCHEDULE
SIMULATE
IDENTIFY
HARVEST
Service Expressions (e.g., SRU, SRW, Z39.50, CQL,
ECL in specific context) Behaviours Operations D
ata Definitions Standards Specifications
AUTHORISE
MESSAGING
REGISTER
ALERT
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Service Usage Models
Learning Object Repository Network
Business context
Services
Data
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Guides the collaboration framework

• Each Component is documented within a
  Collaboration Framework

DEFINITIONS
TEMPLATES
QUALITY ASSURANCE
A Service Genre Description Contains

• Name
• Rationale
• Classification
• Version
• Description
• Functionality
• Usage Scenarios
• Applicability
• Requests and Behaviours
• Use and Interactions

• Structure
• Applicable Standards
• Design Decisions and Tradeoffs
• Implementation Guidance and Dependencies
• Known Uses

Service Genre Vs Service Expression

• Genre technology independent
• Expression one specific way to realise the
  genre
• Many expressions for each genre
• Different expressions may overlap in function
• Expression may be only part of one genre
• Key component for interoperability
• In specific context, project, community
• May tighten standards and data semantics
• Can be used to develop service implementations
• Can be service-oriented design and runtime
  contract
• Any one SUM in terms of either expressions or
  genres, but not both (XOR)

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What can it do?

• Publishing Information
• Asset catalogue of technologies and standards
• Experiences in adoption, testing emerging
  standards and technologies
• Communities focused around interoperability
• Leveraging International Experience
• What are other countries doing (consistent vocab)
• How are they doing it (consistent model)
• Strategic Advice
• Pick a community in which to interoperate
• Informed choice of domain tools, standards and
  technologies
• Existing gaps become more obvious
• Promotes reuse and not rebuild

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What can it do?

• Interoperable Development (Standards and
  Services)
• Standards encourage Interoperability, soa
  encourages Integration
• But Standards and Services are not enough!
• Addresses interoperability at the pain points
• At the business policy/process level
• At an application and implementation level
• At the service-oriented level(service interfaces
  and contracts)
• At the semantic level
• In a specific context
• Adoption and Adaptation
• Taking standards or community profiles and
  adopting or adapting
• e-Framework provides a feedback mechanism
• Analysis of differences between
  communities/adaptations

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But the e-Framework

• is not intended to be prescriptive
• is not meant to be implemented all at once
• is not an architecture

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How it is being used

• Work in progress (Wiki)
• Research
• Research Journal SUM
• Research Project Registry SUM
• ARCHER SUM
• Australian National Grid SUM
• MAMS National Grid SUM
• Storage Resource Broker (SRB) SUM
• gLite Data Management (EGEE) SUM
• Learning
• R2Q2 SUM
• SPAID SUM
• ResponseProcessing SUM
• CamTools Sakai SUM
• Learning Object Repository Network (LORN) SUM
• Flowtalk SUM

• Library
• FRED Repository Federation SUM
• ASK SUM
• USQ ePrints Repository SUM
• Administration
• Student Transfer SUM
• Early Notification SUM
• Identity and Access Management SUM
• Common SUMs
• Australian MAMS SUM (Shibboleth)
• FRED Authenticated Harvest SUM
• OpenID SUM
• MAMS OpenID Provider SUM
• Persistent Identifier Linking Infrastructure
  (PILIN) SUM

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Back to the Central Question

• So does the e-Framework represent a pattern of
  behaviour that we can adopt together that helps
  effectively progresses the goals of education and
  research?
• Answer Yes, when it comes to understanding and
  acting upon technical interoperability of
  services.

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How can Enterprise Architecture use EA?

• You can use the e-Framework as part of your
  toolkit for constructing a collaborative
  enterprise services architecture

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Building an ESA with the help of the eFramework

• What services is it practical to include within
  an ESA?
• I need a way of designing acceptable usage
  patterns for service X.
• This service is really important to a number of
  business areas, how do I communicate this to a
  non technical audience?
• How do I engage with existing infrastructure and
  expertise?

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• Research Project Case Study

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A Case Study Research Project Information

• The Problem
• Research project information is replicated all
  over the research sector
• In Grant proposals, ethics applications
• On departmental websites
• In the use of high performance computing
  facilites and the creation of virtual
  organizations
• As part of RQF submissions

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• Research Project information should flow across
  these systems like course information flows
  across systems in the student sphere
• Except that it doesnt

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Research collections
Central admin
Granting Bodies
Dept
High Performance Computing Facilities
Media
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Research collections
Central admin
Granting Bodies
Research project registry
Dept
High Performance Computing Facilities
Media
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• To successfully argue for a new approach to
  communicating research project information, I
  need to be able to tell a compelling story about
  services that crosses multiple organizational
  boundaries.
• A problem ready made for the eFramework

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eFramework Approach for describing a research
project registry

• Identify candidate service usage models for a
  research project registry from the perspective
  of
• High performance computing facility
• A faculty or department
• Granting body (such as the ARC)
• Research collection registry

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eFramework Approach for describing a research
project registry

• Based on the business needs, factor out the
  services required

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eFramework Approach for describing a research
project registry

• Describe in detail how these services interrelate

Request VPAC services for a project
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eFramework Approach for describing a research
project registry
Use the set of service interactions defined in
the Service usage models as a basis for
describing a service expression
Service Expression
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eFramework Approach for describing a research
project registry

• Identify existing standards candidates upon which
  a research project registry could be based.

Funding Programme
http//www.eurocris.org/
Classification
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What then?

• Advocate!
• Across 4 countries
• Across the University sector
• Revise with feedback
• Seek support a resaerch project repository
  service

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Contributing

• http//www.e-framework.org
• Documentation, templates, instructions
• Contact the editors
• editor_at_e-framework.org
• e-Framework Community Wiki
• https//e-framework.usq.edu.au/users/wiki/
• In use by contributors
• See whats happening
• Contribute, Comment

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• For more information
• Contact editor_at_e-framework.org
• Newsletter http//www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/E-FRA
  MEWORK.html
• This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
  Attribution-ShareAlike-2.5 Australia Licence.