http://www.xcri.org/forum/ XCRI Forum: Recent Posts en Fri, 30 Jul 2010 11:53:39 +0000 http://www.xcri.org/forum/topic.php?id=102#post-346 Tue, 27 Jul 2010 15:37:27 +0000 Alan Paull 346@http://www.xcri.org/forum/ <p>Pete</p> <p>Just let me know where it is, and I'll make sure it gets included in the current (manual) listings. We're working on a more automatic register. </p> http://www.xcri.org/forum/topic.php?id=95#post-345 Tue, 27 Jul 2010 15:36:05 +0000 Alan Paull 345@http://www.xcri.org/forum/ <p>If there's any appetite for this, I'm happy to do conversions from XCRI-CAP to CSV for the Courses Directory. </p> http://www.xcri.org/forum/topic.php?id=62#post-344 Tue, 20 Jul 2010 20:16:52 +0000 Tavis 344@http://www.xcri.org/forum/ <p>I think my sample code is still valid, in the sense that it will produce a valid subset of XCRI CAP 1.1 (and earlier). I use the SQL stored procedure for my <a href="http://www.kelpiecollege.org.uk/courses">test website course feeds</a>. I can post the ASP.NET code that takes the XML from the stored procedure and displays it in a web page, if that is any help (it is mostly concerned with feeding parameters in).</p> <p>Unfortunately, I have not updated the stored procedure for various reasons, including:</p> <ul> <li>I did not want to duplicate any other work going on for a toolkit;</li> <li>Our College has not yet got a production SQL Server 2005 in place for our website;</li> <li>we had a faint hope that Tribal would have produced an XCRI export for our student records system, SITS:Vision;</li> <li>I was waiting on XCRI CAP 1.2 before going back to it.</li> </ul> <p>However, I am quite happy to take another crack at this, if there is any interest (and people to test and advise).</p> <p>I had envisaged that a reasonable solution might be to give feed implementers a HTML form, where the labels were the XCRI CAP elements and attributes, and the text inputs were the qualified relational database columns. Submitting the form would then return the SQL code to CREATE the stored procedure. I would only be able to do the Microsoft SQL Server output, as I am not familiar with Oracle, MySQL or others. </p> http://www.xcri.org/forum/topic.php?id=62#post-343 Mon, 19 Jul 2010 08:31:20 +0000 http://evvo1961.myopenid.com/ 343@http://www.xcri.org/forum/ <p>Tavis, this is the sort of code im seeking as my course data is in SQL SERVER. i noticed you posted this 11 months ago... is it still valid?</p> <p>If not do you have an updated stored procedure? </p> http://www.xcri.org/forum/topic.php?id=103#post-342 Mon, 12 Jul 2010 14:07:14 +0000 Scott Wilson 342@http://www.xcri.org/forum/ <p>You know, Sebastian Rahtz did a similar mashup for Oxford's XCRI feed a few years back too:</p> <p><a href="http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/events/workshops/webmaster-2007/competition/submissions/" rel="nofollow">http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/events/workshops/webmaster-2007/competition/submissions/</a> </p> http://www.xcri.org/forum/topic.php?id=103#post-341 Mon, 12 Jul 2010 13:36:12 +0000 Scott Wilson 341@http://www.xcri.org/forum/ <p>Yes, OpenID is a bit of a moving target and there may be some "code rot" on that site. Let me know if you still have problems.</p> <p>The site is the same one, its just the "demo" version looked a bit different with that green background etc. </p> http://www.xcri.org/forum/topic.php?id=103#post-340 Mon, 12 Jul 2010 12:57:41 +0000 Pete 340@http://www.xcri.org/forum/ <p>Ok thanks I had already seen that example I thought there must be another demo aggregator as it looked quite different in the images on the link.</p> <p>However I do seem to be unable to login with my OpenID on that aggregator to try my own feed. I won't say it's definitely an issue until I have tried it from home as it might be a firewall block or something but I keep getting the message:</p> <p>We're sorry, but something went wrong.</p> <p>We've been notified about this issue and we'll take a look at it shortly. </p> http://www.xcri.org/forum/topic.php?id=103#post-339 Mon, 12 Jul 2010 12:12:26 +0000 Scott Wilson 339@http://www.xcri.org/forum/ <p>This is used in the XCRI demo aggregator at </p> <p><a href="http://www.xcri.org/aggregator/" rel="nofollow">http://www.xcri.org/aggregator/</a></p> <p>Not all results will yield mappable information - here's an example that does:</p> <p><a href="http://www.xcri.org/aggregator/courses/19890-Academic-English-International" rel="nofollow">http://www.xcri.org/aggregator/courses/19890-Academic-English-International</a> </p> http://www.xcri.org/forum/topic.php?id=103#post-338 Mon, 12 Jul 2010 11:33:12 +0000 Pete 338@http://www.xcri.org/forum/ <p>I have just seen this <a href="http://www.elearning.ac.uk/features/xcrimashup" rel="nofollow">http://www.elearning.ac.uk/features/xcrimashup</a> looks like a cool aggregator adding google maps location data. Does anyone have a link for this example I don't seem to be able to find one. </p> http://www.xcri.org/forum/topic.php?id=102#post-337 Mon, 12 Jul 2010 11:24:11 +0000 Pete 337@http://www.xcri.org/forum/ <p>I have setup the XCRI feed for my college and it seems to validate through the online validator. Once I have made a couple of adjustments for some warnings it is ready to go.</p> <p>Is there a list of bodies I should be submitting our xcri feed link to for aggregating the information? </p> http://www.xcri.org/forum/topic.php?id=95#post-336 Mon, 12 Jul 2010 10:41:49 +0000 Pete 336@http://www.xcri.org/forum/ <p>Any more word on this Alan with respect to an xcri import bearing in mind we are an FE college so the info will not be coming from UCAS (which we also have to submit a couple of courses to manually). I guess it will not be ready for the 1st August submission. </p> <p>This is a real pain and they have left it extremely late in the year to tell us this considering we are a small provider the time investment to do this is quite high. To be honest I can't believe they are resorting to a CSV import and all the problems around that along with that when we have a very good flexible system with the xcri xml feeds.</p> <p>Just ranting but I am frustrated we are heading backwards again. </p> http://www.xcri.org/forum/topic.php?id=101#post-335 Fri, 09 Jul 2010 10:56:52 +0000 Alan Paull 335@http://www.xcri.org/forum/ <p>Posted on behalf of Kirstie! </p> http://www.xcri.org/forum/topic.php?id=101#post-334 Fri, 09 Jul 2010 10:56:18 +0000 Alan Paull 334@http://www.xcri.org/forum/ <p>As you are involved (or your organisation is involved) with developing XCRI imports, or aggregations, I would be grateful if you could spend a few minutes or so to answer some questions in the document <a href='http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/eportfolio/xcri/Docs/Questions%20for%20importers_ROBOT-XCRI_KC1.doc'>here</a> and return them to me. Even if these are things that you haven’t considered as yet, it would be useful to hear your points of view.</p> <p>This is to support our JISC-funded ROBOT-XCRI project, to develop some generic processes and best practice for importing/aggregating XCRI content.</p> <p>Many thanks in advance,</p> <p>Kirstie</p> <p>Kirstie Coolin, eBusiness Analyst<br /> Centre for International ePortfolio Development<br /> University of Nottingham<br /> 0115 95 16976</p> <p>Now Booking: XCRI day 22nd July <a href='http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/eportfolio/news/XCRI_Events_22_July_2010.shtml'>http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/eportfolio/news/XCRI_Events_22_July_2010.shtml</a> </p> http://www.xcri.org/forum/topic.php?id=100#post-333 Fri, 09 Jul 2010 10:44:14 +0000 Tavis 333@http://www.xcri.org/forum/ <p>While I like to see our College associated with the XCRI project, I think that the aggregator would be best excluded from <a href="http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Adam Smith College">search engine results</a>, since it contains test course feeds (in our case anyway, and that's what is documented on the <a href="http://www.xcri.org/Tools.html">XCRI Tools</a> page). </p> http://www.xcri.org/forum/topic.php?id=99#post-332 Fri, 11 Jun 2010 11:55:08 +0000 scottwilson 332@http://www.xcri.org/forum/ <p>We also just met with JISC to talk about what work we'll be doing this year, and we included working on XSLT transformations between the various flavours of XCRI, which should also help matters.</p> <p>(... but we still need to figure out a versioning strategy) </p> http://www.xcri.org/forum/topic.php?id=99#post-331 Fri, 11 Jun 2010 11:53:11 +0000 scottwilson 331@http://www.xcri.org/forum/ <p>Hi Craig, </p> <p>We'll probably decide the version strategy here in this thread ;-)</p> <p>S </p> http://www.xcri.org/forum/topic.php?id=99#post-330 Tue, 08 Jun 2010 10:31:24 +0000 Craig Hawker 330@http://www.xcri.org/forum/ <p>I don't know enough about the various options and their pros and cons to constructively contribute to that discussion. I just thought I'd raise it as I can foresee it being a bit of an issue moving forward with all the various standards.</p> <p>For the moment the answer is "do the best but it'll be a hack". That's fine, at least I can move forward.</p> <p>As and when the version strategy is resolved, could someone post on here? When you're not tightly involved with the project, digging through the changes in the wiki or trying to find it on the evolving 1.2 specification isn't very easy.</p> <p>Craig. </p> http://www.xcri.org/forum/topic.php?id=99#post-329 Tue, 08 Jun 2010 07:42:23 +0000 scottwilson 329@http://www.xcri.org/forum/ <p>The versioning strategy is something we really do have to sort out. </p> <p>The current roadmap has us completing 1.2, and then when we've tested that submitting a case to BSI for creating a new British Standard. So at a minimum we're going to have to potentially deal with:</p> <p>XCRI 1.0<br /> XCRI 1.1<br /> XCRI 1.2<br /> BSI XCRI</p> <p>Adding a @version attribute on the root element is an obvious approach to take. An alternative is to use a different namespace. Both have their pros and cons. </p> http://www.xcri.org/forum/topic.php?id=99#post-328 Tue, 08 Jun 2010 07:32:37 +0000 Craig Hawker 328@http://www.xcri.org/forum/ <p>Sorry for the confusion - it does seem it was discussed a while ago.</p> <p>You're right, when the college has multiple feeds, autodiscovery muddies the water somewhat so let's ignore that. However, as an example, let's concentrate on the 'feed was 1.0, now 1.2' scenario as that's the one that could cause the most trip-ups.</p> <p>From a validation perspective, the 'rules' - or guidance - may well change dependent upon the XCRI-CAP version being validated. Okay, in my particular instance, I could attempt to identify the document type then allow an override (in a similar way to the W3C validator when validating HTML), but it just feels dirty...!</p> <p>This is a rather academic (!!!) discussion at the moment as I won't even start looking at 1.2 until it's all been sorted out, I just wanted to know others peoples' opinions.</p> <p>Craig. </p> http://www.xcri.org/forum/topic.php?id=99#post-327 Mon, 07 Jun 2010 22:10:52 +0000 Tavis 327@http://www.xcri.org/forum/ <p>I think that a similar issue came up in an earlier <a href="http://www.xcri.org/forum/topic.php?id=59">discussion on autodiscovery</a>. I suppose that:</p> <ol> <li>course providers may want to publish <a href="http://www.kelpiecollege.org.uk/courses">multiple feeds</a>;</li> <li>some aggregators would allow feed submission where the provider stated/chose which version their feed was;</li> <li>aggregators could perform sequential validation against all XCRI schemas (a clumsy catch-all, perhaps).</li> </ol> <p>You may be right that a CAP+version attribute of the <code>catalog</code> element might be simpler for future versions. I think that a Docbook root <code>book</code> element has a @version attribute, for example. I expect that an XML schema would make this a literal. However, I do not know best practice here. </p> http://www.xcri.org/forum/topic.php?id=99#post-326 Fri, 04 Jun 2010 13:52:55 +0000 Craig Hawker 326@http://www.xcri.org/forum/ <p>With version 1.2 of the XCRI-CAP standard being actively developed, we're heading towards having three potential sets of live XCRI-CAP feeds: 1.0, 1.1 and 1.2. Each set/version having some subtle changes between it and the previous version.</p> <p>I've tried looking through the 1.2 standard but I can't see anything which identifies which version of the standard the document is written for. Have I missed it? I was anticipating either an optional attribute that I've not included, or guidance on feed autodiscovery locations that indicate version numbers, HTTP header elements that may be sent, etc.</p> <p>My current thinking is from the perspective of validation and aggregation, where the system may use one of the feed autodiscovery features to identify a feed without any (or much) third-party input. Or if a known feed (1.1) gets re-vamped to 1.2, how should any consumers handle that change?</p> <p>The only ways I've looked at so far are:<br /> 1. Looking for an explicit attribute/identifier. I can't see one at the moment.<br /> 2. Looking at the namespace. However I believe the namespaces are currently the same between versions.<br /> 3. Looking at the XSD reference location. However, if the standard is extended then the XSD location will be different.<br /> 4. Looking for identifiers within the XML document (i.e. knowing that "Relation" has been replaced with "HasPart" in 1.2 vs 1.1)<br /> 5. Blanket-parsing all possible options (i.e. try and find "Relation" - if none, try "HasPart", if none...)</p> <p>Or am I looking at this too deeply? The changes seem to be relatively minor/subtle, should I just man-up and write code that blanket-parses everything (my only concern is this getting messy as the standard progresses over time).</p> <p>Craig. </p> http://www.xcri.org/forum/topic.php?id=98#post-325 Fri, 28 May 2010 08:44:39 +0000 Craig Hawker 325@http://www.xcri.org/forum/ <p>I am struggling to find any concrete data but, assuming that XCRI-CAP 1.0 specification was XML, it should be possible to convert everything using XSLT.</p> <p>For example, if you write the system to accept XCRI-CAP 1.1, you can transform XCRI-CAP 1.0 documents to XCRI-CAP 1.1 documents before you import them. Similarly with 1.2 when it comes out.</p> <p>Bear in mind it may well not be a 100% process - you might not have information, or you might have to lose information, or there might not be an applicable conversion between nodes, but it should work.</p> <p>I mean, the other alternative is to write import/export providers for all the various standards. I assume from your original post, though, that you're not willing to do that. This might be a quick-and-not-too-dirty alternative.</p> <p>Craig. </p> http://www.xcri.org/forum/topic.php?id=96#post-324 Tue, 25 May 2010 09:31:08 +0000 Scott Wilson 324@http://www.xcri.org/forum/ <p>D'oh which I'd know you'd already done if I'd clicked the link <em>before</em> replying... </p> http://www.xcri.org/forum/topic.php?id=98#post-323 Tue, 25 May 2010 09:29:27 +0000 Scott Wilson 323@http://www.xcri.org/forum/ <p>Hi Shane,</p> <p>You should focus on XCRI 1.1 now rather than worry too much about XCRI 1.0 backwards compatibility.</p> <p>You should also keep an eye on the development of XCRI 1.2, which will probably be released next year, and factor that into your planning:</p> <p><a href="http://www.xcri.org/wiki/index.php/XCRI_CAP_1.2" rel="nofollow">http://www.xcri.org/wiki/index.php/XCRI_CAP_1.2</a> </p> http://www.xcri.org/forum/topic.php?id=96#post-322 Tue, 25 May 2010 09:25:08 +0000 Scott Wilson 322@http://www.xcri.org/forum/ <p>That would definitely be useful. It is possible to just paste XSLT into the wiki pages if nothing else (indent one space to make it quoted as code).</p> <p>(I reckon visualization of XCRI data is going to be one of the "killer apps" when there are enough feeds around) </p> http://www.xcri.org/forum/topic.php?id=98#post-321 Mon, 24 May 2010 11:01:59 +0000 http://www.google.com/profiles/116067009608382795659 321@http://www.xcri.org/forum/ <p>We are currently developing an XCRI import/export utility for a regional provider. We have been using the CAP 1.0 schema, only to find that we should be using 1.1. </p> <p>Is there any simple mechanism that will enable us to process both 1.0 and 1.1? Also, how widely used is 1.0? If not many implementers are using 1.0 then perhaps we can ignore it and focus on 1.1? </p> <p>Any helps on this would be appreciated... and again, we are new to this, so apologies for our ignorance! </p> http://www.xcri.org/forum/topic.php?id=97#post-320 Mon, 24 May 2010 09:17:22 +0000 http://XCRI-Hull.myopenid.com/ 320@http://www.xcri.org/forum/ <p>CPD for Health and Social Care will use XCRI to help learners and professional bodies identify bitesize sessions, modules or courses to meet or mandatory CPD and professional development requirements by reconciling course information with requirements. Local Strategic Health Authorities and NHS Trusts increasingly have a need for training in leadership and management. The requirement for training is expressed in terms of the Knowledge and Skills Framework (KSF) competences, while the University of Hull and members of the University Federation of Colleges offer a range of provision expressed in terms of courses - levels 2 and 3, bitesize, University Certificates and Diplomas, FDs , degrees, postgraduate qualifications. By reconciling the course information from providers with the KSF requirements of learners and employers, CPD for Health and Social Care will facilitate the identification by employers of relevant leadership and management provision to meet CPD needs. At the same time, staff will be able to identify provision that will qualify them for further development of their career. Reconciling the information will also help providers identify gaps in provision and match their offering to the demand. </p> http://www.xcri.org/forum/topic.php?id=96#post-319 Sun, 23 May 2010 19:38:51 +0000 Tavis 319@http://www.xcri.org/forum/ <p>I think it has been said that there will be a library of sample XSLT transformations which will turn XCRI CAP 1.1 into XHTML: course details pages, course list pages (A-to-Z, by organisational unit and/or subject) and search results. Similarly useful will be transformations into print formats (say XSL-FO).</p> <p>On a lighter note, here is some <a href="http://www.xcri.org/wiki/index.php/Sample_XSLT_code_for_transforming_XCRI_CAP_1.1_into_X3D_for_data_visualisation_purposes">sample XSLT code for transforming XCRI CAP 1.1 into X3D for data visualisation purposes</a> which is intended to be illustrative of the potential, rather than specifically useful. Data visualisations can be useful for spotting patterns, and highlighting relationships. Possibly a visualisation comparing different institutional feeds would be of interest. </p> http://www.xcri.org/forum/topic.php?id=95#post-318 Tue, 18 May 2010 09:16:45 +0000 Alan Paull 318@http://www.xcri.org/forum/ <p>"They are getting their HE course info directly from UCAS - which for us is a retrograde step for us... as you know UCAS only allows data to be manually submitted :(..."</p> <p>We're working on that. UCAS has included XCRI-CAP in its current work stream on data management. </p> http://www.xcri.org/forum/topic.php?id=90#post-317 Mon, 17 May 2010 15:07:34 +0000 Scott Wilson 317@http://www.xcri.org/forum/ <p>Definitely happy for any examples or to fix any bugs - any of us can track the changes using the History pages to check its OK. If its things like typos or examples I'd say change first then let us know rather than ask first.</p> <p>Note that XCRI 1.2 spec development is currently underway, and this uses a single Wiki page rather than a page for each element, so should be a bit easier to manage. </p> http://www.xcri.org/forum/topic.php?id=90#post-316 Mon, 17 May 2010 14:47:09 +0000 http://cpjackso.myopenid.com/ 316@http://www.xcri.org/forum/ <p>Just to bring this issue back up again - whilst implementing XCRI I spotted a number of slight errors/bugs in the wiki pages and also that many of the entries don't have associated examples. I would have added some as I was completing my work - but was unsure due to these rules?</p> <p>Are the mods happy for me to contribute some examples and fix any bugs that I come across? (eg. The schema specifies a particular order for the XML tags - but this isn't immediately apparent on reading the wiki). </p> http://www.xcri.org/forum/topic.php?id=95#post-315 Mon, 17 May 2010 14:27:05 +0000 http://cpjackso.myopenid.com/ 315@http://www.xcri.org/forum/ <p>I went to one of the Skills Funding Agency workshops last Thursday in Leeds. Initially they are asking institutions to upload in CSV or manually enter their course information.</p> <p>However - they do mention XCRI in their documentation;<br /> "An XML version which will allow direct uploads from provider MIS systems (including delta updates) is in development in the XCRI format information which can be found at <a href="http://www.xcri.org" rel="nofollow">http://www.xcri.org</a>".</p> <p>The general impression was that XCRI bulk uploads would be implemented 'in the future' - but there were no fixed dates yet.</p> <p>Also note-worthy: They are getting their HE course info directly from UCAS - which for us is a retrograde step for us... as you know UCAS only allows data to be manually submitted :(...</p> <p>HTH. </p> http://www.xcri.org/forum/topic.php?id=95#post-314 Mon, 17 May 2010 13:04:22 +0000 Alan Paull 314@http://www.xcri.org/forum/ <p>Not directly involved. I understand that Hotcourses is providing back end services for bulk upload (as they hold the current contract for NLD).</p> <p>Maybe someone who went to one of the workshops could post here? </p> http://www.xcri.org/forum/topic.php?id=95#post-313 Mon, 10 May 2010 12:45:29 +0000 Richard Hyett 313@http://www.xcri.org/forum/ <p>Anyone involved with this new directory? Since the Directory will contain Skills Funding Agency and HEFCE funded provision for adults aged 19+, it will be fairly large, so it's important that XCRI is embedded from it's inception.</p> <p><a href="http://skillsfundingagency.bis.gov.uk/funding/allthelatest/providerupdate/newcoursedirectory.htm" rel="nofollow">http://skillsfundingagency.bis.gov.uk/funding/allthelatest/providerupdate/newcoursedirectory.htm</a></p> <p># The new Course Directory replaces the current National Learning Directory and regional Skills Funding Agency databases of provision.<br /> # The new Directory aims to provide high quality, accurate information and underpins the adult advancement and careers service as an authoritative source of information on learning options.<br /> # Data collection and validation will move from the current manual process to a bulk upload with auto validation, linked to funding. This will result in a more efficient system, allowing data to be collected more frequently and leading to a more accurate and comprehensive database.<br /> # The new Course Directory will contain only Skills Funding Agency and HEFCE funded provision for adults aged 19+.<br /> # It will be a contractual obligation for providers to update course information on at least a quarterly basis and it is therefore essential that a representative of your organisation attends a workshop. </p> http://www.xcri.org/forum/topic.php?id=94#post-312 Mon, 10 May 2010 12:40:05 +0000 Stuart Feltham 312@http://www.xcri.org/forum/ <p>Apologies for the confusion. </p> <p>My sentence was meant to read "...gone live TO BE USED as part of the CCLiP BR project". </p>