What is the SIF Specification?
A. The SIF Specification is a set of documents developed by SIFA work groups, committees and task forces comprised primarily of software engineers from educational software companies. These documents articulate a set of common definitions for school data and a set of rules for how this data can be shared. The common data definitions are called data objects. Data objects cover many items that are involved in schools. For example, a student´s name, address and phone number are part of the ´StudentPersonal´ data object. Having different software programs understand this common definition of a student makes it possible for them to share this information properly. There are 89 data objects currently defined. Additional data objects will be defined as the Specification matures. In addition to the data objects themselves, the SIF Specification also defines the rules for how software programs can send these data objects to each other. This set of rules is called the ´infrastructure´ and uses w
