XCRI 1.2 Requirements

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1 Design Goals
2 Requirements

[edit] Design Goals

Accessibility: The specification needs to support relevant accessibility guidelines, such as WCAG 2.0.
Compatibility with other standards: The specification needs to maintain compatibility with, or directly make use of, other standards where possible.
Current development practice or industry best-practice: The specification needs to consider the development practices currently used by developers and promote relevant industry best-practice.
Internationalization and localization: The specification needs to implement relevant internationalization and localization guidelines, such as i18n-XML and BCP 47, as well as consider current practical internationalization solutions used by the development community.
Interoperability: The specification needs to attempt to be as interoperable as possible with existing systems.
Longevity: The specification needs to be specified in such a way that it ensures that a feed can still be processed well into the future.
Security: The specification needs to address the security concerns of end-users, authors, distributors and device manufacturers by recommending appropriate security policies and programming behavior.
Wider community benefit: Any new technologies or processes defined by the specification need to designed in such a way that they are beneficial to the wider community at large. In other words, the specification should try not to be insular to its problem domain, but should also consider the needs of the wider community.
Simplicity: The specification must be simple to implement by providers using existing course databases and publishing systems or as a single static XML file
Implementation-readiness: The specification must be simple to implement by aggregators using existing metadata harvesting and syndication techniques
XML interoperability: The specification must be capable of being parsed by widely used XML parsing modules in a range of languages, including PHP, Java, Ruby, C#
Enable new opportunities: The specification must enable the development of added-value services using aggregated data as a starting point, and must support a wide range of potential business models
Efficiency: The specification must reduce the amount of data transformation and re-keying needed to advertise courses
Immediate Benefits: The specification must provide immediate and identifiable benefits for both provider and aggregators/brokers
Flexibility: The specification should allow course information to be rendered, reordered, transformed and matched in a wide range of ways with precise selection of strongly-typed but elastic data elements.

[edit] Requirements

[edit] R1: Conform to the European Norm for Metadata for Learning Opportunities

The specification must conform to the European Norm for Metadata for Learning Opportunities (See CWA 15903.)

Motivation: compatibility with other standards, longevity, interoperability

Rationale: The MLO standard represent the core agreement on course information across Europe, and supporting this standard enables wider interoperability between XCRI implementations and systems in other EU countries conforming to other specifications based on MLO.

[edit] R2: Support Online Application Links

Support links to online application process where supported

Motivation: Current development practice or industry best-practice, Enable new opportunities, Immediate Benefits

Rationale: See discussion at http://www.xcri.org/forum/topic.php?id=76

[edit] R3:Support Higher Ambitions

Provide more details for applicants based on the Higher Ambitions recommendations. The areas of weakness in XCRi-CAP 1.1 from this perspective *might* be opportunities for international experience and access to external expertise or experience.

Motivation: Enable new opportunities, Immediate Benefits

Rationale: See discussion at http://www.xcri.org/forum/topic.php?id=75

[edit] R4:Flexible date handling

Support dates in a way which enables flexible behaviour with regard to dates; for example specifiying only a year or month name, or a complete datetime, without worrying too much about the ability of an aggregator to be able to intelligently process the information.

Motivation: Simplicity, Interoperability, Flexibility

Rationale: See discussion at http://www.xcri.org/forum/topic.php?id=71