The LIS v2.0 Adapter

LIS refers to the IMS Global Learning Consortium's Learning Information Services specification. This specification, finalized in Q2 of 2012, has been a joint operation between numerous educational institutions, LMS, and SIS vendors (D2L included), and has been in the making since the original IMS Enterprise specification was released in 1999.

The LIS v2.0 Adapter is the D2L implementation of the IMS LIS Specification Core, Combined Sections, and Full Course Hierarchy profiles for a Learning Management System. The solution provides support for both Bulk and Real-time integration between the Student Information System and Brightspace Learning Environment.

For most operations D2L is considered the Synch Agent, and therefore D2L implements the web service operations which are called by the Ref Agent, which is typically a Student Information System. For a few services and operations, such as Outcomes and Bulk, D2L may also call some services and operations in the Student Information System, reversing the Synch and Ref Agent roles.

The adapter consists of a collection of LIS Services, each of which has one or more operations that an SIS can call. When the SIS calls the operation, it uses LIS translators to convert the LIS request into a more generic IPSIS Platform request. The translated requests are passed on to IPSIS handlers (components of the IPSIS Platform) to be further processed and to act against the LMS. The results of this processing are returned to the calling SIS. In the case where D2L is initiating the call, LIS handlers provide the implementation that communicates with the service operation on the SIS side.

Note: This version of the LIS v2.0 Adapter has been built to utilize the released final version of the IMS LIS 2.0 Bindings (XSD, Vocabularies, WSDL) as of April 16, 2012.