Re: [seul-edu] SIF and EduML revisited

[Doug Loss <dloss@suscom.net>]

Bruno Vernier wrote:
> 
> On Thu, Jan 13, 2000 at 08:02:51AM -0600, Eric Sandeen wrote:
> 
> > I was thinking about this last night, and came up with this:
> > It seems that SIF's XML system is designed more for _network_ data
> > transmission (changes and updates are communicated over the network in
> > XML snippets), independent of the actual data file format each
> > application uses, which may actually be a closed spec.  The only
> > requirement is that an "agent" is available to handle the XML queries
> > from the network.
> 
> Yes, I agree.  SIF website suggests ZIF (ms win32 source available) as an
> agent.  Someone on the list mentioned the CASBAH project (which is similar
> to Frontier) as another possibility, and I think Zope could do the job as
> well.  That is the beauty of XML; it does not matter what handles the XML.
> What matters is that all programs speak the same XML (and if not, at least
> some sort of XML so that it can be relatively easily converted)
> 
In looking at the SIF diagram it seems clear that the agent is where the
SIF XML knowledge is located rather than in the individual
applications.  The agent is a wrapper around the program.  I don't see
why we couldn't a) write an agent for an EduML-data-format app so that
it could use a SIF backend, or b) write agents for various apps for
which SIF agents exist which would convert their data formats to EduML
rather than to SIF.  It would be a nice trick to take an installation
that was intended to run against some Microsoft SIF backend server and
easily convert it to run against a Linux-based EduML system over (for
example) Casbah.

-- 
Doug Loss                 The difference between the right word and
Data Network Coordinator  the almost right word is the difference
Bloomsburg University     between lightning and a lightning bug.
dloss@bloomu.edu                Mark Twain