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Academic Enterprise Initiative

Cary Brown, OracleLinda Feng, OracleDan McCallum, UniconJim Layne, Unicon

December 7, 2006

The following is intended to outline our general product direction. It is intended for information purposes only, and may not be incorporated into any contract. It is not a commitment to deliver any material, code, or functionality, and should not be relied upon in making purchasing decisions.The development, release, and timing of any features or functionality described for Oracle’s products remain at the sole discretion of Oracle.

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Program Agenda

• What is the Academic Enterprise Initiative?• The AEI and Sakai• The AEI Architecture• The AEI Going Forward

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What Is The Academic Enterprise Initiative (AEI)?

What is the AEI?

• A platform for providing robust integration of Higher Education applications and technologies

• An out of the box integrated solution for the entire academic enterprise• Batch and Real Time• Service Oriented Architecture• Business process driven (BPEL)

What is the AEI? (cont.)

• Built around two pillars• Student Information System• Course Management System• Other apps then span the gaps as needed by institutions

A Multi-Phase Project

• Phase I will provide services and administration for Enterprise data needed by LMS

• Phase II provides Enterprise services beyond that needed by LMS, servicing other applications needed by Higher Ed institutions

CMSSakaiSISCampus Solutions

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The AEI and Sakai

The AEI and Sakai

• Partnership with Unicon announced on August 1st of this year to deliver the next generation of academic enterprise• Unicon is a well-established, long-time Sakai community

member currently providing implementation and training for Sakai

• Partnership provides• OOTB integration between Campus Solutions and Sakai

• A distribution of Sakai optimized for OOTB integration with the Oracle AEI

• A fully vendor supported version of Sakai

Why Sakai?

• Built by higher education for higher education• Need for stronger pedagogical tools likely to be better driven

by this model

• Strong framework orientation provides flexibility and long term vision for evolution

Sakai for Oracle

• What we think it will be:• Sakai packaged with adaptors/connectors, possibly some

branding, configured for optimal use in the AEI• We will be working within the community source model to

create enhancements and modifications as part of the Sakai community

• What it will NOT be:• A branch or deviation from core Sakai

Support for the AEI

• Oracle will support all Oracle-delivered elements of the AEI

• Unicon will provide support for Sakai for Oracle through their Sakai Cooperative Support program

• Partnership provides coordinated end-to-end support

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The Architecture of The AEI

AEI Architecture Using Sakai

Sakai Framework

Native Sakai Tools

Campus Solutions

Students, Courses Enrollment

Gradebook

Grades

Oracle Collab Suite Tools

Collab Suite

Portfolio “Plug in”

Oracle Personal Portfolio

BPEL

Notifications

Portal

Integration Challenges

• Problem #1: Data in common• Need to define and replicate data to ensure “single source of

truth”

• Problem #2: Lack of Common Structures• Need to define and standardize Enterprise-wide objects for

different vendors within the Academic Enterprise to support• IMS Enterprise model is a start, but needs semantic definitions

Phase I - SIS to LMS integration: Objectives

• Define generic information and service model to enable SIS to LMS integration (moving towards IMS adoption)

• Enable Campus Solutions(CS) to support generic service based model

• Create adapter to connect generic integration to Sakai, if needed

• Test integration with Sakai as reference implementation

Architectural Goals

• Phase I: Enable standards-based data exchange between CS and Sakai for Person, Courses, Enrollment and Grades

• Allow for Independent Operation (Loosely Coupled)• Maximize Uptime 

Campus Solutions

Person

Sakai framework

Section Info tool

Faculty Course Page

Course

Enrollment

Invoke web service to “provide”

data

Sakai-CS Integration: Logical Architecture

Grades/Outcomes

Integration Models

• Asynch “Pull”• Sakai quartz job to “pull” snapshots of data on a regular

interval

• Synch “Pull”• Use of Sakai apis such as CourseManagementService• However this implies reliance on remote data access

• “Push” (Event Driven)• When data changes at source, communicate with target to

make corresponding change • Use of Sakai apis such as CourseManagementAdministration

AEI Approach

• Provide initialization capability• Schools can run snapshots as often as they want (nightly)• Ensures no missed updates

• Provide incremental event driven capability• Allows near real time data synchronization• Occurs independent of running transactions on both source

and target systems

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The AEI Going Forward

Beyond Phase I

• Student Data Hub• Gradebook and Portfolio integration• Collaboration Suite integration• Analytics

The Vision

Campus Solutions

Sakai

Q&A