The 2018 Ed-Fi Bootcamp, hosted in conjunction with the Ed-Fi Summit, concluded with a Tech Town Hall where technologists from across the Ed-Fi community convened in a plenary session for an open discussion on priorities for the Ed-Fi technical community and Ed-Fi Technology Roadmap.
During that discussion, the topic of open source database options – and database choice more broadly – quickly rose to the top. (Summary notes on all topics discussed at the Tech Town Hall are available here.) Participants in the discussion cited interest or need for inclusion of other database platforms within the Ed-Fi technology stack on the basis of cost and capabilities. And the general input from those working in the Ed-Fi codebases is that – like most software issues – the technology stack can be refactored to support more options.
Accordingly, the Alliance will be convening a Special Interest Group (SIG) on “Open Source Databases and Database Diversity” to review and prioritize community needs and use cases in this area, provide actionable recommendations for the Ed-Fi Technology Roadmap specifically, and provide recommendations for the Ed-Fi Community work in this area more broadly.
Any Ed-Fi community members are invited to join this SIG. As with all SIGs, those who join are expected to actively participate, and for this SIG in particular, Community members will be asked to actively participate in sharing their use cases as well. In other words, no lurkers please – all SIG meeting notes and materials are available to the community on Ed-Fi TechDocs if you just want to review SIG activities.
If you are interested in participating, please send an email on or before Friday, October 26 to governance@ed-fi.org with the subject line “Ed-Fi Open Source Databases and Database Diversity SIG.” We look forward to gathering this group and making progress in this area.
