16 posts tagged with "ed-fi"

Soon the Ed-Fi Alliance will release version 2.0 of our Analytics Middle Tier, welcoming it to the "big kids' table" as a fully supported add-on to the ODS database.

When we started this project in 2018, it was with the aim of creating a production-ready proof-of-concept (a seeming oxymoron, we know) for simplifying the Ed-Fi Data Model, thus making the ODS more useful for reporting and ad hoc analytics exploration (see From Diagrams & Definitions: Solving the Analytics Reporting Gap). As such, it was released on the Ed-Fi Exchange instead of being bundled into the core ODS/API platform.

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The most popular request at the 2018 Ed-Fi Summit’s tech town hall was for an option to run the Ed-Fi ODS / API on an open source database solution. Historically, the Operational Data Store (ODS) database has been developed on Microsoft SQL Server, matching the preference of educational agencies that rely on heavily discounted licensing terms for on-premises operation of SQL Server. The advent of cloud-based hosting has changed that dynamic, especially since Microsoft ended the "bring your own license" (BYOL) practice.

One implication of that change is that educational agencies wishing to use SQL Server may need to pay full price when using non-Azure managed services for SQL Server; however, even with BYOL, managed services with SQL Server does cost more than other database platforms. So, with the help of an Ed-Fi Special Interest Group, we narrowed the field to one alternative database platform (for now…).

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If data lands in the ODS and no one uses it, does it empower educators?

Ed-Fi Community members are increasingly leveraging the Ed-Fi ODS as a source of data for business intelligence (BI) solutions, while many continue to develop it as a solution for compliance reporting. While the Ed-Fi vendor community provides many options for analytics based on the ODS data, some end-users wish to create their own custom reports and perform their own ad hoc analysis. The Analytics Middle Tier and the two Analytics Starter Kits recently published to the Ed-Fi Exchange aim to help this group by simplifying the ODS data model, provisioning support for role-based data access, and providing sample visualizations. These solutions aim to empower those IT staff who are empowering their educators and administrators.

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According to Amazon Web Services (AWS) CEO Andy Jassy, at his keynote Wednesday morning, I am one of around 53,000 people from all over the world who have come out to the annual AWS re:Invent conference in Las Vegas. We come together from myriad industries and with interests that span the full range from product development to operations to account management. My personal learning objectives for the week are to deepen my understanding, and think about implications for the Ed-Fi tech stack, of four concepts:

• Data lakes
• Serverless
• Business intelligence
• .NET on AWS

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We just wrapped up the 2018 Technical Bootcamp as part of the Ed-Fi Summit. The Bootcamp is a two-day event where we dig into the technical details, provide hands-on training and demonstrations, and get feedback from the technical community on challenges they’d like to address and improvements they’d like to see made. We had a number of sessions geared specifically toward local education agencies (LEA), state education agencies (SEA), and vendors.

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Have you ever tried to write a query using the Ed-Fi ODS for reporting or analytics? To say that it is challenging is to use the mildest language. The Data Standard documentation in Tech Docs is top notch. Nevertheless, going from diagrams and definitions to actual query code for, let’s say, each student’s average math grade during a grading period, is not a trivial exercise.

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