Naming conventions

Readers are warned in particular that XmlRpc struct field names are case sensitive. Because of this confusion, LISS uses:

• camel-case with an uppercase first letter for field names, e.g.: FirstName
• camel-case with a lowercase first letter for method names, e.g.: getStudents

Note that with reference fields, i.e. fields that can refer from one object to another, we attempt to keep the same spelling in both places. For example, StudentId’ is the same in all places where it’s used. However, with non-reference fields, the convention is to not duplicate the table name in the field name – e.g. we use Name instead of StudentName.

Note also that we use 2 parallel forms of identification: codes and id’s. A 'code' is a short mnemonic identifier which is unique within the school. An 'id' is a slightly longer identifier, often numeric but not necessarily, also unique within the school. For example, there is both a TeacherId and a TeacherCode field. The reason for this is that in Australia as at the creation of LISS, mnemonic identifiers rather than numeric identifiers are used by almost all timetabling software packages to communicate to SIS’s.

LISS also has a StatewideId field for students, which is envisaged to be unique amongst all students in all schools within one instance of an SIS. However, this is not used as a reference field.

Note that there has been discussion within LISS about a 3rd form of identification: UUID’s aka GUID’s: Globally unique identifiers, such as are used in SIF. However, at this stage we are not including support for GUID’s in LISS.