[seul-edu] Gradebook Architecture

["David C. Moore" <dmoore@mbhs.edu>]

Okay, we've been tossing around a lot of ideas for how to write an
gradebook application.  Some say EduML, others say SQL.  I've come up with
a design for a generic gradebook application that would allow any type of
database (but I recommend XML).  Also, the design could integrate well
into a SIF environment.

Please look at my design (with diagram) at
http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~dmoore/edu/gradebook.html.  I would
appreciate any comments, and would encourage discussion of anything I've
said.

I've taken a long look at SIF (http://www.schoolsinterop.org) and decided
that I like it very much.  It is just a specification for message passing
between applications based on XML.  It requires a central server (the ZIS)
to mediate the transmission of the messages from application to
application.  Code for such a server has been written by Microsoft for NT,
but it should not be difficult to code our own for Linux, since we have
the specs, and do not need to use any MS code.

I encourage you to visit the "Specification" page on the SIF site.  If you
look at it, you will see they have already proposed a spec for gradebook
message passing.  Although we can still use EduML for data storage, SIF is
still very useful for communication between apps.  I suggest we use the
SIF-proposed gradebook spec.

Once again, please take a look at my design above, and lets hammer it into
something usable.  Once we get to that point, we can start work on some
platform independent code for a standardized gradebook that can be
integrated into any GUI, from the web to GTK.

Thanks very much.

Regards,

David Moore

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  David Moore       California Institute of Technology
 <dcm@acm.org>             http://www.mbhs.edu/~dmoore
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