Dear all,
I am actively participating in a European research effort that aims at developing and examining a Web-Service-based integration standard for learning resource repositories called SQI or Simple Query Interface (see LORI/SQI site). Currently there is a substantial number of European and Non-European repositories interconnected by using SQI, e.g.:
* Amazon book store
* Ariadne
* CLIX
* Educanext-UPM
* ULI
* EduSource
* Edna
and many others ...
SQI is a standard definition for a Web Service infrastructure that distinguishes between query sources and query targets. SQI therefore defines a set of minimal and additional methods which are expected to be implemented by any query target in order to allow an arbitrary number of sources to issue queries against them.
Therefore, SQI is >NOT< a standard for querying per se but a standard for query management and query exchange (synchronous-asynchronous modes, etc.). In other words, using SQI does not necessarily mean that one is required to use a specific mediating (meda-)data schema or query language. We have experienced quite a few integration scenarios so far, including the usage of RDF as mediating data model and a RDF-enabled query language for expressing common queries and the translation back and forth between RDF and the RDF query language and the repositories' ones, i.e. XML/XQuery, Relational data model/ SQL, etc.
Now, a group of researchers and Moodle users would like to provide for the SQI integration of Moodle and are currently planning the development of a proper SQI extension based on PHP5 internal SOAP capabilities or an external SOAP framework for PHP.
Therefore, we would like to discuss a few key issues publicly in this forum and gather your opinions and hints:
* Are there any experiences with SOAP integration and Moodle (I'm aware of a Quiz activity module ...)?
* Are there any integration guidelines for components/ modules other than activity modules, in particular when accessing the data base layer?
* In Moodle, is there a core data schema which is extended by each activity module? To put it differently, how can a SOAP extension cover all meta-data available at a Moodle instance running certain activity modules?
There will be more qestions coming up as our internal discussions continues. Questions, recommendations and hints are highly welcome.
regards,
Stefan Sobernig
//research assistant ~ Vienna University of BA and Economics - Department of Information Systems
I wonder if QTI of JISC is SOAP coupling. (Gustav?)
Coppercore LD-engine needs a soap coupling
I'd like to know if web services have ever been considered for Moodle. It would be nice to have a simple (XML-RPC?) interface into Moodle from remote systems. I could see a "services" directory within Moodle that contained variuous functions to get/add/delete data. Obviously authentication would be an important issue to consider.
Anyone know if this has been discussed?
Anyone know if this has been discussed?
I had an interesting conversation about exactly this in New Zealand last February. Things like OKI should be kept in mind here.
I think it could be a useful thing to do sometime ... but it's not something I can see happening this year (unless you want to implement it
)
I think it could be a useful thing to do sometime ... but it's not something I can see happening this year (unless you want to implement it
Thanks for pointing out the OKI project. I had never heard of it before.
After looking a some of the OKI documentation, it seems to me that they have a good idea but may be overthinking the solution. It seems like they are making things much more complex than they really need to. I mean, why don't they use one of the current web service formats (SOAP or XML-RPC)? There are many applications that can already speak these languages. It seems like they have spent a few years developing this complex API, when a simple solution would be quicker/easier. According to this article, they are working on a new version that at least uses XML. It's due out later this year.
http://www.okiproject.org/project/update_6.html
But, who am I to question the brainpower at MIT?
After looking a some of the OKI documentation, it seems to me that they have a good idea but may be overthinking the solution. It seems like they are making things much more complex than they really need to. I mean, why don't they use one of the current web service formats (SOAP or XML-RPC)? There are many applications that can already speak these languages. It seems like they have spent a few years developing this complex API, when a simple solution would be quicker/easier. According to this article, they are working on a new version that at least uses XML. It's due out later this year.
http://www.okiproject.org/project/update_6.html
But, who am I to question the brainpower at MIT?
The IMS Tools Interoperability Project
http://www.imsglobal.org/workinprogress.html
is one of the 1st "standards" based efforts to utilize
Web Services. In the current project, an initial "Guideline"
(read not yet a fully formed Specification) is being done.
The idea is to "launch" some external tool and to return
"results" to an LMS. Both launch and results are done with WS.
At the Alt-I-Lab 2005, see http://www.imsglobal.org/altilab/index.html,
the IMS TI project will show off where things are at.
UW-Madison is providing a new tool, ConceptTutor,
as one of the external tools. LMSes include BlackBoard,
WebCT, Sakai.
See http://engage.doit.wisc.edu/projects/ConceptTutor.
These are like a "glossary on Steroids". Best suited for some
content repository. Also has an embedded "assessment" (see the
Check tab). The results returned would be from there.
This would be an interesting use of Web Services within Moodle.
Not all that much to implement. And when we get back
from Alt-I-Lab (I'm on the demo team), we should have some
better sense of whether this is ready for prime time.
Our current implementation uses Fedora for the external content repository,
using an Axis "side car". Perhaps edukaLibre could work.
http://www.imsglobal.org/workinprogress.html
is one of the 1st "standards" based efforts to utilize
Web Services. In the current project, an initial "Guideline"
(read not yet a fully formed Specification) is being done.
The idea is to "launch" some external tool and to return
"results" to an LMS. Both launch and results are done with WS.
At the Alt-I-Lab 2005, see http://www.imsglobal.org/altilab/index.html,
the IMS TI project will show off where things are at.
UW-Madison is providing a new tool, ConceptTutor,
as one of the external tools. LMSes include BlackBoard,
WebCT, Sakai.
See http://engage.doit.wisc.edu/projects/ConceptTutor.
These are like a "glossary on Steroids". Best suited for some
content repository. Also has an embedded "assessment" (see the
Check tab). The results returned would be from there.
This would be an interesting use of Web Services within Moodle.
Not all that much to implement. And when we get back
from Alt-I-Lab (I'm on the demo team), we should have some
better sense of whether this is ready for prime time.
Our current implementation uses Fedora for the external content repository,
using an Axis "side car". Perhaps edukaLibre could work.