Re: [school-discuss] SIF versus other initiatives

[Les Richardson <les@celery.richtech.ca>]

Hi Matt,

> > I agree that we should ignore SIF  and work on open source
> > applications. 

Perhaps "ignore" is too strong a phrase. It's simply a matter of
priorities... when building a new house, the priority is to get a roof
over the head and not to worry about the color of the walls in the master
bedroom.

SIF is used to help large or small applications intercommunicate. One
_could_ build an entire application around a series of applets using 
this approach. However, it is normally used (is it used?) for large
applications to talk to each other. It is also not a really simple thing
to be able to build an app to talk to a ZIS (when we have an O/S one) 
from reading over the SIF specs.

So, I would say that we don't forget about SIF, it's just good to be 
aware of its existence and while designing your applications, to "give a 
nod" in the SIF direction.

I have to add features to Open Admin for Schools to talk to our 
provincial student data system (SDS) using a subset of SIF features, so 
these ideas are certainly important ones for all developers working in 
the education area.


Les Richardson