HITS (Hub Integration Testing Services)

Systemic Pty Ltd is the architect, designer and implementer of the SIF3 Provider for HITS. This National SIF3 Testing Hub is a fully fleshed Direct SIF3 Hub that enables vendors and jurisdictions to test and validate their SIF3 Consumers against the national agreed upon use-cases. NSIP started this project over three years ago with the support of Systemic’s software engineers. HITS is constantly being updated with the new use-cases that are put in place by the states. Systemic has implemented this generic SIF3 Provider using the Java version of the SIF3 Framework. Systemic also provides support & training in the usage of the HITS provider.

 

RIC One API

Systemic Pty Ltd are providing critical core consultancy services to the Lower Hudson (LH) and North East (NE) Regional Information Centers (RIC) in New York State. We have been involved in the architecture, design and implementation of the hugely successful SIF3 RIC One API. This is a Direct SIF3 Hub using the North America SIF xPress Data Model. In the early phases Systemic was at their side in training staff of the NERIC in Albany. This two day training course was an introduction in the usage of the SIF3 Frameworks to develop the RIC One Provider. We have been supporting the NERIC development team on an on-going basis in implementing their SIF3 Hub which is now in production for a number of years. In a second stage Systemic conducted the vendor training session in Albany. The RIC One API was further extended to also have a SIF2 agent which was put in place using Systemic’s open-source SBP Agent Framework. Systemic’s partnership with NERIC & LHRIC is ongoing to this day.

Testimonials

Joe Fitzgerald – Assistant Director, Lower Hudson Regional Information Center (NY, USA):

It’s important to our districts that applications adopt the xPress API. We offered a no-charge professional development event led by Joerg to enable vendors to get up to speed quickly on one of the best tools, the SIF3 Framework. His in-depth knowledge of SIF 3 and the toolset was a real accelerator for several of the vendors in our marketplace.

Jason Wrage – CEO & Principal Consultant, OVRTR, Inc. (USA):

The SIF 3 Common Framework provides a solid and scaleable open source foundation for RIC One API’s appliance implementation, which is the RIC’s strategy for implementing regional infrastructure for rostering in New York. Systemic has been a great partner, providing training for our people, and rapidly responding to our specific needs with changes to the SIF3 Framework.

 

SIF3 Framework (Java & C# – .Net)

Along with the sponsorship of NSIP, we have developed an open-source framework for SIF 3. This Framework is available in Java and C# (.net). They enable developers to efficiently implement SIF 3 services (consumers and/or providers) with a minimal learning curve. They fully encapsulate the low level SIF 3 infrastructure and also provide a basic environment provider for SIF DIRECT which is core to SIF 3. This abstraction allows the developer to wire up the various components of a SIF 3 Service (consumer and/or provider) in an efficient manner by only writing the minimal amount of code to have the skeleton of a service ready for deployment. Many components and their behaviour are controlled by a configuration file rather than writing a large amount of code. The developer can then concentrate on the business logic or data access layer to retrieve/store data from/to their system rather than spending time writing agent infrastructure code.

 

SBP Agent Framework (Java & C# – .Net)

Along with the sponsorship of NSIP, we have developed the open-source framework called “The SIS Baseline Profile (SBP) Agent Framework”. It is a basic Java/.Net Framework intended to help developing SIF Agents in an efficient manner that are based on the Australian SIS Baseline Profile as agreed on by many vendors and SIF Agent developers. The SBP Agent Framework enables SIF Agent developers to write agents that are compliant with the business rules as laid out by the SBP. The intent of this framework is to provide developers with the infrastructure that underlays the SBP. These infrastructure functions include but are not limited to:

  • Start-up Control of Providers/Subscribers of an agent
  • A Caching Mechanism of dependent SIF Objects and an automatic request of missing dependent objects

 

SIFCommon Framework (Java & C# – .Net)

Since November 2008 our staff have worked on an open-source agent development framework called SIFCommon Framework. This framework is available in Java and .Net. It has been developed as part of the Proof of Concept 1 (POC1) and Proof of Concept 2 (POC2) and other projects such as Tri-Borders. A major update to the framework has been conducted in April 2011 that was sponsored by NSIP.

The SIFCommon Framework abstracts low level functionality that is common to all agents by means of providing an easy to use API on top of the OpenADK. It adds further functionality behind the scene such as interfaces to deal with large data sets, multi-threading etc. These things are all behind the scene and fully transparent to a developer.

This allows the agent developer to wire up the various components of an agent (subscribers & publishers) in an efficient manner by only writing the minimal amount of code to have the skeleton of an agent ready for deployment. Many components and their behaviour are controlled by a configuration file rather than writing a large amount of code. The developer can then concentrate on the business logic or data access layer to retrieve/store data from/to their system rather then spending time writing agent infrastructure code.

 

Tri-Border

The Tri-Border Project collects the student attendance information from three states (NT, SA and WA) and merges it into one central system. The Tri-Border project is a complete SIF AU v1.0 implementation using Java (WA) and .Net (NT, SA) utilising various SIF ADK’s and ZIS. Joerg Huber is the lead architect, designer and developer for the SIF Agents for WA, which were developed in Java using the OpenADK and the SIF Common Framework.

 

Real Time Student Data Exchange

This project was run under the ‘Towards SIF’ initiative. Joerg Huber created the SID Agent and OTLS Agent for this project.

Proof of Concept Phases 1 and 2

In late 2008 we were involved in the SIF Agent Development when the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development (DEECD) in Voctoria launched an initiative that run under the name Proof of Concept 1 & 2.

This POC1 and POC2 intended to demonstrate that SIF provides the capability to:

  • Achieve data exchange between systems
  • Demonstrate that different SIF vendors’ tools can interoperate in the SIF open standards environment
  • Demonstrate SIF solving a real world problem
  • Build confidence and knowledge around SIF within DEECD
  • Develop materials that will assist and encourage other education authorities to trial SIF
  • Determine the suitability of SIF for the DEECD production environment which supports the government school population in Victoria of 500,000+ students at 1600+ schools

As part of this program we have written a number of SIF Agents in Java to integrate with their Student Information
System (SIS) used by Victorian Government Schools (Cases21). These agents were successfully trialed and enabled the Cases21 system to exchange time tabling information with the 3rd party time tabling tool from Human Edge.