The TSDS Canonical Data Model (CDM) Overview
The TSDS Canonical Data Model (CDM) represents a model of commonly exchanged education data. The model includes entities that will be easily recognized by people in the education field: students, teachers, assessment results, attendance, and many others. Those entities contain properties or attributes that are also easily recognized: assessment results have things like grades, dates assessments were taken, etc. It also contains common relationships or associations between these elements, such as the enrollment relationship between a student and his/her campus or school.
As a reference model, the CDM is an abstract framework from which a variety of concrete uses may be based. Its primary use is envisioned to form Texas standard for various XML-based scenarios for exchanging education information.
The scope of the CDM is focused on PK-12 education data relevant to the District or Local Education Agency (LEA), which includes LEA to State Education Agency (SEA) or LEA to Federal reporting. Within the scope or context of the LEA, the CDM reference model may be used as a basis for the following:
- Identify the data requirements for a specific application, data store, or interchange
- Develop the logical data model for an operational data store or other education database
- Inform the development of the dimensional model for an education data warehouse
- Create a standard for data exchange between applications like student information systems and data warehouse and data reporting systems
- Define the data component of transactions or services
- Identify the source data to drive dashboards, scorecards, or reports
The draft Canonical Service Envelope (CSE) defines a standard for specifying the service(s) to be invoked as part of a data interchange that is independent of the communications or service mechanisms that are utilized. The CSE XML schema is complementary to the CDM by defining a set of standard types and templates for creating a service envelope for data interchanges. The CSE was drafted during Phase 2 for application and refinement in future phases.
The following Phase 2 resources are available for download.
CDM Reference Model
The CDM Reference Model provides producers and consumers of education data a common model with which to understand, reuse, and share information.
CDM Technical Implementation Guide
The CDM Technical Implementation Guide helps people in a technical role to understand the key concepts and technical aspects of applying the CDM XML data standard to facilitate the interchange of education data in various situations and contexts.
CDM Design Guidelines
The CDM Design Guidelines provides technical data specialists supporting information about the design principles, patterns, and conventions used for the CDM Reference Model and its associated XML schema standard.
CDM Changes and Rationale
The CDM Changes and Rationale document details the changes to the CDM made during Phase 2 and the rationale for each.
CSE Technical Implementation Guide
The CSE Technical Implementation Guide provides people in a technical role guidance for creating service envelopes for data interchange based upon the draft CSE standard.
The documents shared here are in draft form and are based on Phase 2 of the District Connections Database project. The site content will continue to be updated to reflect experiences and observations from future phases.
Phase 2
