Making disparate software programs work together to exchange information is a constant challenge for educators. Often, educators find that critical student information is housed in a variety of applications that cannot easily exchange these data. While data integration is possible, it is usually time-consuming, ineffective, and expensive.

The Schools Interoperability Framework (SIF) promises to ease the development work needed to move data from place to place. Designed by educators and software companies that understand the current inefficiencies, as well as the potential benefits--more robust reporting, more efficient use of resources, more effective courses--that are possible with simpler data integration in schools, the SIF specification is now being used by hundreds of districts across the country. Other districts can realize these benefits, too, by deploying SIF-compliant products.

The first step toward reaching that goal is separating what SIF is from what it is not. What it is not is a commercial product. Instead, it is a set of data specifications that outline how information should flow among diverse applications in K-12 computing environments. The specs center on two items: a set of common data definitions, so applications understand the information they are working with, and a set of rules for how data can be shared, so data can be transferred from one system to another.

The data definitions, called "data objects," include information commonly generated in educational applications--for example, a student's name, address, and telephone number are part of the "StudentPersonal" data object. The data interchange rules are based on open and widely used standards and are not tied to particular operating systems, network equipment, or application platforms. As a result, schools are able to implement SIF regardless of what computers, software, or networks they have.

Because applications are constantly being enhanced and the industry is always concocting new methods of processing information, SIF is dynamic and has been evolving continually since its initial inception in the spring of 2003. Much like software programs, SIF comes in various releases, and a series of three numbers illustrate its different versions. In release 1.5r1, the first number indicates a major release: a version of SIF with significantly new functionality stemming from a substantial change to SIF messaging rules or data objects. The second number (5 in the example) points to a minor release version (one with incremental new functionality), and the last item (r1 in the example) indicates that this is a revision, or "fix," which means there have been some minor text changes to the documentation associated with the release, but no changes to the specification's functionality.

Because the process is dynamic, the SIF community has to decide when to take a snapshot of the standard, so vendors can design and users can buy SIF-compliant products. Usually, the snapshots are completed every 12 to 24 months. To date, two versions of SIF have been completed, and a third looms on the horizon.