What's New in v2.6

Owned by Ian Christopher (Deactivated)
Last updated: Jun 27, 2019
2 min read

This documentation provides a summary overview of the major improvements, updates, fixes, and changes made in the Ed-Fi ODS / API v2.6. A comprehensive listing of all changes is documented in the Release Notes section. 

Improvements & Enhancements

This section briefly describes new features and enhancements built into the ODS / API v2.6 and provides links to additional documentation. ODS / API v2.6 implements Ed-Fi Data Standard v2.2, which means there are no breaking data standard changes accompanying this release.  

Student ID to Identification Code Translation

There are multiple student identifiers in the education data ecosystem. Several cases have emerged in the Ed-Fi Community where student IDs in API transactions (i.e., the studentUniqueId field) is not known to the client application. As a result, a related transaction fails. This issue has been raised in, for example, the ODS-1824, ODS-2664, and ODS-2791 tickets. 

The recommended long-term solution is to facilitate, push, and drive rostering products to support configuration of different IDs for different agencies, and to store all roster IDs. However, the Ed-Fi ODS / API v2.6 includes a student identification code translation functionality as a stopgap measure.

Things to consider while using this feature:

  • The Ed-Fi ODS / API provides a way to configure API clients so they can interact with the Ed-Fi ODS / API using their chosen student identifier. The identifier is in the StudentUniqueId property everywhere it appears in requests and responses. This design is based on the concept of operational contexts already in use for Ed-Fi Descriptors in Technology Suite 3 products. Essentially, an operational context is a context in which an API client would interact with the Ed-Fi ODS / API using the Descriptor values and identifiers (for education organization and people) that are most convenient for them. While the metadata required to add operational context support for Descriptors is significant, the metadata required for supporting students (or staff) is significantly lower — simply the selection of a particular student identification system.
  • This design is based on the Ed-Fi Alliance's knowledge on how identification codes are currently being used in the ecosystem, and is designed to fulfill a limited set of use cases.
  • This design assumes that SIS systems hydrated ODS with student identification codes that are known to the client application.
  • Ed-Fi Certification has added a requirement that a SIS provide all 3 "priority" IDs at play in today’s ecosystem. See v2 and v3 certification tests for specifics.

See the following documentation for details:

Visual Studio 2017 Support

Visual Studio 2017 (Community edition or higher) or Visual Studio 2015 (Professional edition or higher) can be used as development environment ODS / API v2.6.

Bug Fixes

This release also includes a number of bug fixes contributed by the Ed-Fi Alliance and implementers. Details are catalogued in the Release Notes section of this documentation.