What is Catalog Metadata Synchronization?
Catalog metadata synchronization is the process of extracting, transforming, and loading a customer's curated catalog from edX into the targeted remote system, so learners are able to discover edX courses within that system.
By properly synchronizing metadata across these distributed systems, customers and vendors can ensure that catalog metadata is accurate, up-to-date, and consistent. With the right approach, catalog metadata synchronization can help customers to harness the power of edX to drive business growth and success.
Expectations of edX Catalog Metadata Synchronization
- Environment: The Direct Integration synchronization process (ie, the code) will be implemented by either the customer or the customer's service provider. The process will be hosted either in the remote system itself, or in a middleware service owned by the customer or the customer's service provider.
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Consistency: The Direct Integration synchronization process must ensure consistency in mapping data attributes, structures, and relationships to key objects in the remote system as presented by the tools available in the edX Enterprise Integration Toolkit.
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Timeliness: The Direct Integration synchronization process should be performed on a daily basis utilizing the edX Enterprise Integration Toolkit to ensure that a customer's curated catalog is always up-to-date in the remote system. Delayed synchronization often results in discrepancies and errors when launching edX courses, particularly as the size of the curated catalog's metadata set increases.
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Security: The Direct Integration synchronization process must be performed securely using the tools provided in the edX Enterprise Integration Toolkit to ensure that customer-specific catalog metadata is not compromised during the synchronization process.
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Scalability: The Direct Integration synchronization process should be able to handle large volumes of data transmitted across the Internet. The proper integration tools should be utilized based on the size of the customer's curated catalog. The edX Enterprise Integration Toolkit offers an API for smaller metadata sets, and a batch file transfer option for larger data sets.