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Well noted, However, is anyone really surprised at this? Every single supplier of MLE elements, and I mean everyone, always assures me that they are 'working towards/involved in/already meeting' IMS specifications. More often than not they were (claiming to be) involved in either LearnDirect/UfI/NLN materials as well as being involved in producing the IMS specifications at the start. With such a hodge podge of vendors being allowed to produce/write/influence the specifications is it any wonder there is great disparity amongst them? It is often claimed that some companies have too much power where OS and software are concerned but at least they have compatibility between products (OK, so not 100% of the time). Why oh why were so many commercial suppliers allowed into the discussions? would it not have been more worthwhile to have a few selected members together with the use of external consultants ( without vested interests! ) to work with FE to produce the required standards. It is then simply a case of vendors meeting these requirements or not supplying. FE have bent over backwards to let everyone and their dog have a say in what is required and we quite rightly get what we deserve, sales pitch and waffle (from people out to make money, nothing else, just money, no real concern with the quality of education or the teaching/learning experience itself). There will never be compatibility across the systems, anyone who expects different is fooling themselves or selling me something. A golden opportunity has already been lost, it is too late to recover from this fiasco, I like most other colleges will be running with what I have, making the best of it, and (as I always expected) using the tools that came with my VLE to produce my own learning materials - with a small contribution from external suppliers where I can prove they actually work within my VLE. (no I will not take the salesman's word for it) Would we all be using the same software houses for our desktop products (regardless of which one you use) if we could not cut/copy/paste between applications? Think about not being able to edit a picture file and incorporate it into your word processor/presentation software... You can't please all of the vendors all of the time, but you could have tried to please the FE institutions once! Kind regards Colin Seabrook [log in to unmask] -----Original Message----- From: Virtual Learning Environments [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of George Wraith Sent: Friday, November 23, 2001 3:58 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Urgent need for setting specifications (Long Post) Dear all My concern is that there still appears to be no common agreement between all vendors to enable them to incorporate the IMS specifications into their differing software applications, so as to allow them to interoperate with other systems. The differing interpretation of the IMS specifications is now the major problem within our Interoperability pilot. Without these being jointly agreed by all parties involved we will more than likely just end up with separate systems that can exchange data, eventually but certainly not automatically. This being the case I could not see the interoperability of differing systems ever getting off the ground to the extent Colleges would want to buy them, and students would want to use them. It points most Institutions back down the path of "proprietary lock-in". To give the community some idea as to the practicalities here is a brief example of the problem we have come across and STILL have no solution for, despite over a year of discussion. The major problem lies in the differing interpretations of the IMS specifications. In brief, the XML file generated by our MIS suppliers export utility which takes the data from our MIS has a different interpretation of the IMS Enterprise specifications. It therefore produces data in a format that our VLE providers import Utility does not recognise because of their interpretation of the IMS Specifications. Therefore what is required in order to import this XML file into the VLE is raw editing of the XML file. We have managed to achieve the importing of this student data after editing, but it was a long and arduous process. It demonstrates the need for a speedy agreement on the IMS specifications.Both vendor parties are genuinely working as best they can given the moving platform on which they are developing their software. My point is there needs to be a solid platform for vendors to base there developments. It is over a year since the FERL/BECTA conference at which all vendors initially got together to achieve this objective, but there does not seem to be any strategic direction been given by any of the various organisations concerned, and hence very little appears to have been achieved. Do we throw away any chance of true interoperability now? Comments please. George Wraith Product Development Manager New College Durham ***************** List information: ***************** Remember - replies go by default to the entire list. Access the list via the web on http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/vle.html To unsubscribe, email [log in to unmask] with the message: leave vle ***************** List information: ***************** Remember - replies go by default to the entire list. Access the list via the web on http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/vle.html To unsubscribe, email [log in to unmask] with the message: leave vle