Interoperability

I recall attending an e-portfolio conference where as a diversion from some of the less interesting contributions, we decided to decided to count the times that interoperability was mentioned. They were numerous and often the word was used to indicate the likelihood of computer systems failure, much in the way that people referred to the Millennium bug.

Our experience is that substantially interoperability is a myth. We have successfully created secure connections to any other database to which we have been required to make a link. Indeed we currently have in place sites where data is being transferred between multiple databases.

The trend is likely to continue because my colleague Robert Kimoff who is an expert in these matters recently reminded me that with respect to linking to systems that use open source software his view is that systems like Moodle appears to understand the evolving standard SCORM manifest. The manifest is simply an xml file which defines the learning experience and has resources and other supporting files, associated with it. NOW.net our platform has the ability to import just about any type of xml file so we would be able to handle a bridge between Moodle and NOW.net.

If the software is good enough then it can interconnect both ways.