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📢 Ed-Fi API v8.1: Now Available

· 4 min read
Vinaya Mayya
Vinaya Mayya
Senior Technical Program Manager - API

The Ed-Fi Alliance is excited to announce the release of Ed-Fi API v8.1 and MetaEd v4.9. Ed-Fi API v8.1 builds on v8.0 and restores key capabilities that platform hosts relied on in the Ed-Fi ODS/API, along with new options for performance, data integration, and extensibility.

Deployments running Ed-Fi API v8.0 should upgrade to v8.1 and expect to re-provision their databases. See Supported Versions for the support status of each release.

Have questions about the transition from ODS/API to Ed-Fi API v8? See the Ed-Fi ODS/API and Ed-Fi API v8 FAQ for answers on the roadmap, timelines, and what to expect.

Ed-Fi API v8.1​

Ed-Fi API v8.1 supports Ed-Fi Data Standard v5.2 and v6.1 on both PostgreSQL and SQL Server, with minimal and populated database templates now published for both. The ODS/API Platform remains in production and fully supported through the 2028-2029 school year.

Highlights​

  1. Partitioned Cursor Paging: Clients can page through large collections with a page token instead of offset and limit, avoiding the performance degradation of deeper offset-based pages, and can split a collection into ranges to read it in parallel.
  2. Read Replicas and Snapshots: Hosts can register a read-only replica to take read traffic off the primary database, and clients can read Changed Record Queries from a point-in-time snapshot for a stable view of the data during a synchronization run.
  3. DocumentCache: An optional cache of serialized resource JSON lets the Ed-Fi API serve reads without reassembling them from the relational tables. It's off by default.
  4. Event Streaming with Kafka: Ed-Fi API v8.1 can stream the latest state of each resource to Apache Kafka, so downstream systems can react to changes without polling the API. It's off by default and requires the DocumentCache.
  5. Ownership-Based and Custom View-Based Authorization: Hosts can limit a client's access to records created under its ownership tokens, or define their own rules as database views.
  6. Plugins: A supported plugin model lets hosts add their own code without changing the platform. Unique ID validation, the Identities API, and secrets in data store connection strings all rely on plugins the host supplies.
  7. Access Token Management: The self-contained identity provider limits each API client to 15 active access tokens by default, so clients should reuse a token until it expires.

Full documentation for the DocumentCache and event streaming with Kafka is still in progress.

What's New in Ed-Fi API v8.1 covers each of these in detail. The Release Notes list the prerequisites, including PostgreSQL 18 or SQL Server 2025, and the changes to review when moving from the Ed-Fi ODS/API.

MetaEd v4.9​

MetaEd v4.9 adds support for Ed-Fi API v8.1. Implementers extending Ed-Fi API v8.1 will need to update to MetaEd IDE v4.9 or later.

MetaEd 4.9 Release Notes

Try It Out​

Follow the instructions in the Getting Started documentation to deploy the Ed-Fi API and Configuration Service and configure your first data store.

What's Next​

tip

You can track upcoming work in the Roadmap Boards on GitHub. Also see the technology roadmap for tips on how to use this board.

As always, we encourage the community to review the release notes and documentation and begin planning adoption based on your needs and implementation timelines. Your feedback remains critical as these capabilities continue to evolve.