Corner Stones of Semantic Interoperability Demonstrated in a Smart Space for Learning

paper summarizes the demonstration of a semantic network of interoperable educational systems. Based on a standardized query API, plus a common schema for querying and results presentation as well as the query language QEL, the ELENA project has connected several educational nodes, ranging from online bookstores to course databases. The strength of the approach resides in a sufficiently powerful API called Simple Query Interface (SQI) that provides method support for asynchronous and synchronous queries. The underlying common schema is specifically designed to the needs of an educational network of training measures while reusing standardized concepts from IEEE LOM and Dublin Core at the same time. Mediating tools bringing the worlds of RDF, XML and relational databases constitute another critical success factor of this demo.