The following text, especially the last paragraph that talks about an Oracle demo explains the benefits

of using SAIP over any custom code to integrate Campus Solutions with Sakai. The idea is to have 1 standards compliant set of web services (a standard interface), and to integrate with as many third party products as required. Let me know if you need clarification on any point.

1 Reference: IMS
The IMS Global Learning Consortium (a global, nonprofit, member organization) creates standards for the development and adoption of technologies that enable high-quality, accessible, and affordable learning experiences. IMS GLC is now enabling the next generation of Digital Learning Services, combining new forms of digital content, assessment, applications, and administrative services. IMS Global is supported by over 135 organizations. IMS GLC has approved and published some 20 standards that are the most widely used learning technology standards in the world. Widely-used IMS GLC standards include meta-data, content packaging, common cartridge, enterprise services, question & test, sequencing, competencies, access for all, ePortfolio, learner information, tools interoperability, resource list, sharable state persistence, vocabulary definition, and learning design.

History and The Name

In 1995, IMS came into existence as a project within the National Learning Infrastructure Initiative of EDUCAUSE. The formal name for IMS is IMS Global Learning Consortium, Inc., also sometimes referred to as IMS GLC. The original name, when IMS first started in 1997 was the Instructional Management Systems (IMS) project. Over time, it became clear that the term "instructional management system" raised more questions than it answered as different terms were used to describe the same thing, such as course or learning management system, learning server, CBT system, or even an integrated learning system. IMS is concerned with establishing interoperability for learning systems and learning content and the enterprise integration of these capabilities. So please, just call us IMS. The following is a recorded presentation about the IMS Basic Learning Tools Interoperability standard from imsglobal.org. This talk gives a high-level technical overview of Basic LTI and talks about how Basic LTI connects to IMS Common Cartridge (CC) and IMS Learning Information Services (LIS). This also talks about the status of market adoption amongst the LMS vendors and tool providers. http://www.vimeo.com/8073453

1.1 Recent Events

Pearson Education announced on November 5th that they intend to adopt LIS and work with Oracle to integrate a variety of their learning solutions including MyLabs and Mastering products as well as their newly announced LearningStudio platform (a combination of eCollege and Fronter). Several millions of students use these products. IMS CEO Rob Abel, on November 4th, highlighted the support of LIS from a number of student system vendors, namely Oracle, SunGardHE and Jenzabar. Tens of millions of students worldwide, and probably more than a million faculty, use these three vendors' products. That same day, in his annual update on the Campus Computing Survey, Casey Green showed data that indicates academic computing organizations and resources are under pressure, all while more classes adopt LMS, and new technologies like wikis, ebooks and other Web 2.0 technologies are in ever-greater demand for instructional use. Generally Available (GA) as of October 30th, the SAIP, Oracle's implementation of LIS , has batch and event-based integration with multi-target integration capability and the whole functional overlay with the ability to scope and associate classes down to the granular level.

Gilfus Education, on October 27th, predicted that the "combination of academic and administrative functionality into a more cohesive experience" will be among the top innovation trends. While they've got their own approach to resolving that demand, I think they've got the trend right. On October 22nd, at the IMS Quarterly meeting, a collection of vendors, institutions and organizations met to discuss the role the LIS specification and its potential for expansion into ever greater scope encompassing the administrative and academic functionality. Another outcome of this session was the announcement of the LIS Alliance and the next phase of conformance definition to ensure long-term sustainability of the standard. At the same IMS meeting, on October 21st, Oracle demonstrated real-time, LIS based integration to not one, but three independent systems that could play a role in the learning arena - Sakai, Inigral's Schools on Facebook, and Oracle's new Beehive collaboration suite. It was a snoozer of a demo, to quote Michael Feldstein "it was like the inverse of a magic trick, instead of making something trivial look miraculous, it made something heretofore remarkably difficult look incredibly easy."

1.1.1

IMS Global Meeting: Learner Information Services: The demonstration by Oracle SAIP

The demonstration itself involved an implementation of a higher education profile of the LIS specification. In the demonstration, Oracle used its Campus Solutions to manage information about students, course offerings, classes, grades etc in a mythical college. The product was essentially used as single source of truth for student and course information. During the demonstration, Oracle showed how:

LIS demonstration

An update to student and course information within Campus Solutions was synchronised with the Sakai learning environment. Timetabling information was pushed from Campus Solutions to a facebook application, which students could embed on their own facebook page. This is an interesting recognition that student information should be available where students hang out, not just in the official student portal. It also shows how both enterprise learning environments and personal learning environments can be supported by LIS. Group membership information was pushed from Campus Solutions to Oracles Beehive collaboration environment, so classmates could collaborate on particular topics. Selected updates within Sakai could be synchronised back to Campus Solutions (e.g. outcomes information from Sakai pushed back to CampusSolutions). This showed that LIS isnt just a push solution: the learning environments could update as well access information in Campus Solutions.