What's New in v3.0

This documentation covers the changes made for the Ed-Fi Unifying Data Model v3.0. This version is designed to be evolutionary from the v2.0 model. Many changes in the Ed-Fi Unifying Data Model v3.0 are additive and optional, or affect places in the model not widely used. There are a few impactful, "breaking" changes, but these were generally only made when the impact to the ecosystem would be more severe by not introducing a change.

Enhancements have come via feedback from Ed-Fi community based on real-world implementations. Detailed analysis was performed to ensure style consistency, increase options for extensibility, and to facilitate use of the Ed-Fi Unifying Data Model using alternative loading and data exchange methods.

The sections that follow provide a high-level overview of the changes and enhancements, best practices for implementation, and a list of impactful and substantial data model changes. Type and element changes are shown, along with a rationale for the change and links to additional detail.

Audience

The audience for this documentation are technical professionals and decision makers who have adopted previous versions of the Ed-Fi Unifying Data Model. Those considering adoption of Ed-Fi Data Standards aligned with the Unifying Data Model v3.0 may find this information useful as well.

Prerequisites

To gain the most benefit from this information, you should already be familiar with the following knowledge areas:

• Ed-Fi Alliance, see here
• Ed-Fi technology, see here
• Representational state transfer (REST) services, see Chapter 5 here
• Extensible Markup Language (XML), see here
• XML Schema (XSD), see here