SWEET.NET : Introduction

SWEET.NET was funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) in 2004 under their E-Learning Frameworks Programme.

SWEET.NET (Enterprise Web Services with Timetable Extentions for Microsoft .Net) is an open source toolkit for developers wishing to make use of IMS Enterprise Services (IMSES) for the exchange of lightweight institutional data about students, staff, classes and groups. The toolkit also makes use of the extensibility provision in IMSES to allow for the transport of timetable and schedule data, encoded using the iCalendar specification.

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Overview

The Sweet.Net toolkit offers two main areas of functionality:

• Level 3 conformant implementation of the IMS Enterprise Services specification. (For more info, see the IMS Enterprise conformance specification and read our Conformance Statement)
• Support for timetables:
  SWEET.NET makes use of the Extention provision in the ES spec to allow the exchange of personal and group timetable data using the iCalendar specification. For more information on iCal, please visit http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2445.txt. 

In addition, the toolkit is also an example of web service interoperability between the two main competing server platforms: Sun Microsystem's Java, and Microsoft's .Net (Dot Net).

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Usage Scenarios

Scenario 1: MIS / VLE Interoperability

Enterprise Services as implemented in Sweet.Net can be used for the synchronisation of data between an institutional MIS records system and a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE).
ES describes information about people (students, staff, administrators), groups (departments, classes, study groups) and the memberships and roles between the two: for instance "Person X is an instructor in AS Level English Literature, and Persons X and Y are students in that group". This information can - with appropriate middleware or custom code - be synchronised with a VLE to ensure that appropriate resources and access permissions are given to users: students will be able to access materials relevant to their course, and instructors will be able to administer online courses for which they are responsible.

Scenario 2: Timetable enabled Student & Staff Web Portal

With the Timetable extentions implemented in the Sweet.Net project, EWS messages can include data which describes the timetables or schedules for both institutions and groups.
A potential application for this would be an Intranet or web portal application which allows students and staff to access their institutional timetables and personal schedules (perhaps from an iCalendar compliant Personal Information Manager such as Outlook). By using the "Adapter" functionality in the toolkit, this could be achieved regardless of the MIS and portal systems used by the institution, and could draw timetable/schedule data from multiple sources.

A further aim of the project is to demonstrate web service interoperability between the Sun Java and Microsoft .Net platforms. 

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Use Cases

The core use cases for IMSES can be found on the IMS website at: http://www.imsglobal.org/es/esv1p0/imses_usecasev1p0.html

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Framework Context

Sweet.Net addresses the following services identified in the JISC E-Learning Framework:

• Person
• Group
• Membership
• Timetable