XCRI Forum

XCRI Forum » Implementing XCRI

1. 

   martin
   Member

   We're doing a small amount of maintenance work on the proof-of-concept site that was developed as part of the EPICS-2 project's work package 5 (see http://www.epics.ac.uk/?pid=182 for details of the project).

   One of our XCRI feed providers has modified their training booking database so that they can now correctly handle training courses that consist of multiple sessions, and so they would like to put this extra data into their XCRI feed.

   In effect, this means that the <presentation> element would need to have multiple start and end date/times, and multiple venues.

   My current thinking is to add a custom element "session" thus:

   <description xsi:type="epics:session"> (optional, multiple)

   which would then be used to contain the following

   <venue> (optional)
   <start> (optional)
   <end> (optional)
   <duration> (optional)

   The custom <description xsi:type="epics:session"> element would be repeated within <presentation> as many times as needed.

   Please can you let me know what you think of this plan, and whether there's a better way to handle this requirement using XCRI-CAP.

   Thanks,

   Martin Edney
   Durham University

   Posted 5 months ago #
2. 

   scottwilson
   Member

   What's the difference between a presentation and a session?

   Posted 4 months ago #
3. 

   martin
   Member

   Thanks Scott - good question.

   Here's my explanation:

   Imagine a training course "Understanding XCRI" which takes 8 hours to complete.

   So the <course> element refers to the training course.

   We'll deliver it once this term, once next term (so 2 <presentation> elements.

   This term we'll deliver it in 2 x 4 hour slots on Monday morning and Tuesday afternoon, so 2 <session> elements.

   Next term we'll deliver it in 4 x 2 hour slots on subsequent Mondays, so 4 <session> elements.

   So I'd see this in XCRI (roughly, and somewhat truncated) as:
   
<course>
<title>Understanding XCRI</title>
<presentation>
<title>Understanding XCRI - spring term</title>
<duration>8 hours</duration>
<session>
<venue>Room 3</venue>
<start>2010-04-26T09:30:00+01:00</start>
<end>2010-06-26T013:30:00+01:00</end>
<duration>4 hours</duration>
</session>
<session>
<venue>Room 11</venue>
<start>2010-04-26T013:30:00+01:00</start>
<end>2010-06-26T017:30:00+01:00</end>
<duration>4 hours</duration>
</session>
</presentation>
<presentation>
<title>Understanding XCRI - summer term</title>
<session>
<venue>Room 3</venue>
<start>2010-06-07T09:30:00+01:00</start>
<end>2010-06-07T011:30:00+01:00</end>
<duration>2 hours</duration>
</session>
<session>
<venue>Room 4</venue>
<start>2010-06-14T09:30:00+01:00</start>
<end>2010-06-14T011:30:00+01:00</end>
<duration>2 hours</duration>
</session>
<session>
<venue>Room 5</venue>
<start>2010-06-21T09:30:00+01:00</start>
<end>2010-06-21T011:30:00+01:00</end>
<duration>2 hours</duration>
</session>
<session>
<venue>Room 6</venue>
<start>2010-06-28T09:30:00+01:00</start>
<end>2010-06-28T011:30:00+01:00</end>
<duration>2 hours</duration>
</session>
</presentation>
</course>


   Posted 4 months ago #
4. 

   Scott Wilson
   Member

   OK, I get the distinction - these are specific events for the course, so the meetings you have for example. The Oxford folks also had a similar requirement and I believe they used the iCalendar specification in some fashion - I can't remember if they used an XML version of it or just used it inline using the hCalendar microformat.

   Its certainly worth adding something to the XCRI 1.2 Requirements collector:

   http://www.xcri.org/wiki/index.php/XCRI_1.2_Requirements

   Posted 4 months ago #
5. 

   Alan Paull
   Member

   We'll have to think realy hard about whether we extend XCRI-CAP's structure into this territory. This is linking to timetabling perhaps - not necessarily a bad thing.

   However, I would be a little concerned about the structural complexity of including multiple session information in XCRI-CAP. It could certainly be included as textual descriptive information (in one of the description elements). Is it going to be consumed as structural, machine-readable information for advertising / marketing purposes?

   It strikes me that this level of detail is about *running* courses more than *advertising* courses, so it might be better to include it in another XCRI area (in other words not the Course Advertising Profile domain) that might link explicitly to student tracking. Taking a look at the original XCRI release 1.0 (not XCRI-CAP) might be instructive: http://www.elframework.org/projects/xcri/efc_r1.0.xsd/view.

   Posted 4 months ago #

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