Design Template v0.5, 14/2/2017

Early Learning Information (ELI)
National Student Index (NSI)

High Level Design

Name of Company / State the company name
Name of SMS / State the name of the SMS
Document Completed By / Name of person(s) completing this document
Date Submitted for Review / Date template sent to the Ministry for review
Primary Contact Person / Name of person who can be contacted by the Ministry
Contact Details / Phone number and email of primary contact

1Table of Contents

1.About this document

1.1Purpose of this document

1.2Prerequisite documents

1.3Completing this document

2General High Level Design

2.1Software

2.2Environments

2.3Version Control

2.4Vendor Testing

2.5ESAA/ESL machine account credentials management

2.6Exception handling

2.7Disaster recovery

3National Student Index Interface

3.1Search, allocate, create

3.2Data mapping and quality

3.3Business Rule validations

4Early Learning Information

4.1Transmission to ELI

4.1.1ELI event triggers

4.1.2RS7 Data Collection

4.1.3ECE Return Data

4.2Logs

4.3Exception handling

4.4Data mapping and quality

4.5XML Message Validation within SMS

4.6Business Rule validations

4.7Initial data load

5Approach

6Additional Information

6.1Prerequisite documents

6.2Remote Access

1.About this document

1.1Purpose of this document

The purpose of this document is for Student Management System vendor (vendor) to provide information to the Ministry of Eduction (Ministry) of their intended integration design for the:

  • National Student Index (NSI) and
  • Early Learning Information (ELI).

The information provided should give the Ministry a high level understanding of the SMS including (but not limited to):

  1. Software
  2. Environments
  3. Data mapping and quality
  4. Event triggers
  5. Transmission processes
  6. Logs
  7. Handling of exceptions
  8. Management of ESAA/ESL credentials
  9. Message validation
  10. Development approach and timeframes

The completed template is to be returned to

The document will then be reviewed by a Ministry Senior Business System Analyst before approval is given to proceed with your NSI and ELI integration development.

All information provided in this document will be kept in the strictist confidence by the Ministry.

1.2Prerequisite documents

All of the following documents must be reviewed and understood prior to completing this document.

  1. National Student Index GINS
  2. ECE National Student Index GINS Appendix
  3. InfoHub Specification
  4. ELI Data Collection Specification
  5. RS7 Return Data Collection Specification

1.3Completing this document

The orange italic text provides a guide for the type of information the Ministry is wanting you to provide in each section. You may wish to provide additional information if you believe it to be appropriate.

2General High Level Design

2.1Software

  • Describe the software used to develop your SMS (e.g. Java).
  • Describe any third party support on your software

2.2Environments

The Ministry wishes to understand your environments and how security to each environment is set up and controlled.

  • List the distinct and separate environments e.g. production, pre-prod, development, test
  • We would expect a minimum of three environments
  • Development (where you develop and test the SMS)
  • Test (where ECE serviceand the Ministry can test and verify it is compliant)
  • Production (where the SMS is actually in production use by the ECE service)
  • Include any firewalls
  • Describe how access to the environments is restricted to each user type, e.g. developers, testers, ECE user acceptance testers, external users.

2.3Version Control

  • Fully describe the version control process on your production environment
  • Full describe and the process/triggers for moving code between all the environments.
  • We expect version control to be implemented in all environments to ensure:
  • branches are merged and follow standard environment progression
  • environments are in-synch with any emergency fixes
  • environments don’t experience divergence outside of their natural progression for development or backwardly upgraded to incorporate emergency production fixes
  • follow best practice version control practices.

2.4Vendor Testing

  • Fully describe your testing cycle, including testing resouce levels, defect management process, use of test scripts.
  • We expect an appropriate level of vendor testing to be conducted, including but not limited to the following test types/levels:
  • Unit and unit/component integration testing
  • System/Functional testing
  • Regression testing

2.5ESAA/ESL[1] machine account credentials management

  • Describe the ESAA/ESL authentication process flow for both ELI and NSI
  • Describe how the ESAA/ESL machine account credentials will be handled and the process for renewing expired passwords.

2.6Exception handling

  • Describe how the system will handle error responses from ESAA/ESL and from InfoHub. As a minimum cover errors in the 400 series.
  • Describe how users are made aware of error responses and how they are guided to take correctie action

2.7Disaster recovery

  • Describe the disaster recovery process/plan.

3National Student Index Interface

3.1Search, allocate, create

  • Describe (using data flow diagrams for example) how the SMS will integrate with the NSI in respect to the following functions:
  • Search
  • Display results
  • Allocate NSN
  • Update NSI.
  • Describe the management of messages returned from the NSI, including how messages will be presented to users.

3.2Data mapping and quality

  • How does the data in theSMS map to the NSI data fields?
  • What changes, if any, are required to be made to the SMS database to comply with the NSI data fields?

3.3Business Rule validations

  • How will the SMS ensure compliance to the business rules as defined in the NSI requirements?
  • Please provide a complete example how a business rule validation error will be caught, handled and corrected

4Early Learning Information

4.1Transmission to ELI

4.1.1ELI event triggers

The Ministry wishes to understand the transmission process for ELI Data Collection events from the SMS to ELI

  • Describe the transmission approach and schedule, including whether the scheduled transmission can be adjusted to avoid Ministry system overload
  • Explain how and where events are stored prior to transmission
  • How will the SMS recognise the various events when they occur in order to create the required event message?
  • What triggers will be used to initiate the sending of each message type?

4.1.2RS7 Data Collection

  • Describe the RS7 generation process, transmission approach and schedule
  • Explain how and where RS7 data is stored and accessed.

4.1.3ECE Return Data

  • Describe the ECE generation process, transmission approach and schedule
  • Explain how and where ECE data is stored and accessed.

4.2Logs

  • Provide details of the logging process for ELI Confirmation events. As a minimum provide: where logs are held, how longs the log details are held, how long details can be accessed and interrogated

4.3Exception handling

  • Describe the exception handing. Include what would happen if the transmission of an event message (including RS7 and ECE) is delayed or fails to reach ELI and how will you retain the messages for resending?

4.4Data mapping and quality

  • How do the events and data in the SMS map to the ELI event records? (e.g. forenames may not be stored in separate fields on the SMS which means they will need to be parsed before being inserted into a message).
  • What changes, if any, are required to be made to the SMS database to comply with the ELI requirements?
  • How will you ensure the relevant data is valid and complete when a message is triggered to send it to ELI?

4.5XML Message Validation within SMS

  • Please explain how you will manage the XML message creation and validation prior to sending it to MoE’s InfoHub
  • Include the process for informing the user of failed validations.

4.6Business Rule validations

  • How will the system ensure compliance to business rules that go beyond what is defined in the XSD?

4.7Initial data load

After the Ministry has completed all its testing on the SMS you will be required to pass all of the production event data (i.e. all relevant students, enrolment, bookings etc) through to the Ministry ELI Compliance for final checking. Once this checking is completed you will then pass all of the production event data to ELI Production. This will be the initial load of data, and after that the data will come through as event based messages.

  • Describe the process for sending the initial data load from production to ELI Compliance

5Approach

The Ministry wishes to understand, at a high level, your development timeframes. Your estimated timeframes will allow the Ministry to better manage its resources for supporting your development and testing, and allocation of resources for Ministy testing.

Phase (components) / Esmitated Start
(month/year) / Estimated End
(month/year)
National Student Index Interface - Developement / Month/year / Month/year
National Student Index Interface – Test scripts* / Month/year / Month/year
National Student Index Interface – MOE remote testing (if applicable) / Allow 2 weeks duration
ELI Development / Month/year / Month/year
ELI Data Collection Development / Month/year / Month/year
ELI Data Collection – Test scripts* / Month/year / Month/year
ELI Data Collection – MOE remote testing / Allow 4 weeks duration
ECE Return Data - Development / Month/year / Month/year
ECE Return Data – Test scripts* / Month/year / Month/year
ECE Return Data – MOE remote testing / Allow 4 weeks duration
RS7 Return Data Collection- Development / Month/year / Month/year
RS7 Return Data Collection– Test scripts* / Month/year / Month/year
RS7 Return Data Collection – MOE remote testing / Allow 4 weeks duration

*The Ministry will provide Test Scripts. You should allow 3-5 weeks for completing the MOE Test Scripts.

You should note that the Ministry will not give approval for Go Live until all four components have been developed, tested by the vendor, and tested by the Ministry.

ESAA/ESLproduction credentials for NSI and ELI cannot be provided until such a time that you have an ECE service set up within the SMS production. The process to set up the SMS and the ECE service takes approximately 10 days. Once this process is complete you will be provided the production URL’s and Destination Header.

6Additional Information

6.1Prerequisite documents

This document has been completed based on the following versions of prequisite documents:

Document / Version/Date
National Student Index GINS / Version/Date
ECE National Student Index GINS Appendix / Version/Date
InfoHub Specification / Version/Date
ELI Data Collection Specification / Version/Date
RS7 Return Data Collection Specification / Version/Date

6.2Remote Access

The Ministry will require remote access to test your SMS, testing both front end validation and data being transmitted to both NSI and ELI.

  • Describe how remote access can be achieved
  • Advise what information the Ministry users would need to provide in order to get remote access set up.

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[1] ESAA: Education Security Authorisation & Authorization. ESL: Education Sector Logon