SIF Infrastructure Specification 3.1
Important Note: While the documentation below is still available, those familiar with REST should appreciate our newer style of documentation made available starting with the release of SIF Infrastructure Specification 3.4.
SIF 3.0 infrastructure represented a major release of the SIF standard. Currently unused functionality in SIF 2.x was deprecated or replaced entirely, and significant new, non-backward compatible functionality has been added.
As with the release of previous major versions of the SIF standard, extremely valuable feedback regarding confusing or inconsistent statements, specification conflicts with unexpected developer tool limitations, and important missing functionality was received from document reviewers, interested developers and early adopters during the first 90 days after the specification was released to the public. This resulted in follow up efforts to address all these concerns The end result is the creation of SIF Infrastructure 3.0.1. This was a “fix release”, correcting errors inadvertently contained in SIF 3.0 and standardizing additional requested SIF infrastructure functionality. With the issuance of that version of the documentation we believe the basic goals of SIF 3.0 were completely met, in a stable, secure and powerful REST-based infrastructure release that is unlikely to be “broken” in the foreseeable future. As this solid base gained in popularity attention was paid to ease of use. Particularly meeting the expectations of programmers leveraging large cloud services. With this 3.1 release access to data was streamlined, especially for those typical use cases where authentication (and roles) yields authorization. The detailed set of changes to the SIF Infrastructure 3.0.1 documentation which are contained in this SIF Infrastructure 3.1 release are listed in Section 1.13 of the Base Architecture document. Release Date: May 2015
The SIF Infrastructure Implementation Specification 3.1 consists of the following documentation:
READ THIS FIRST
This document is non-normative in terms of technical information. It provides an introduction to and an overview of the key parts of the other SIF 3.1 Infrastructure documents and is specifically designed to let developers come up to speed quickly on the infrastructure.
INFRASTRUCTURE BASE ARCHITECTURE
Defines the ‘core’ concepts and detailed service operation framework of the SIF 3.1 infrastructure, and is the base document on which the other infrastructure volumes identified below depend.
INFRASTRUCTURE SERVICES
Defines the complete specification (data structures, operations, and actions) for the set of core services which together comprise the SIF 3.1 Environment Provider Interface, and details which services are required and which are optional. Some familiarity with the Basic Architecture document is required as all the Infrastructure Services adhere to the architectural framework defined there.
UTILITY SERVICES
A SIF 3.1 Utility Service supports a data object related to the SIF infrastructure, rather than an object which is part of a particular locale-specific data model. This document covers the range of Utility Services and details their purpose and whether they are required or optional. Some familiarity with the Basic Architecture and ‘core’ Infrastructure Services is assumed as a prerequisite, as all Utility Services will employ the Service framework and leverage the specific Infrastructure Services described there.
Two Appendices define the low bar to SIF 3 adoption by detailing the set of mandatory responsibilities and functionality required of a “minimum” SIF 3.1 Infrastructure Consumer and “minimum” Environment Provider.
INFRASTRUCTURE SCHEMAS
These are similar to the Data Model schemas, but they are infrastructure specific, and define the XML objects supported by the core Infrastructure and Infrastructure Utility Services.
