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Ed-Fi API Platforms

The Ed-Fi Alliance publishes the Ed-Fi Data Standard, which models a broad spectrum of commonly exchanged and shared K-12 education data. Two Ed-Fi Alliance implementations bring the Data Standard to life as a relational database and a companion REST API:

  • Ed-Fi ODS / API (versions through 7.x) is the established implementation, tuned to the security and performance needs of K-12 organizations and the education technology vendors who serve them. The ODS uses Microsoft SQL Server or PostgreSQL as a database platform, and the API is written in C#.
  • Ed-Fi API (v8 and later) is the next-generation platform. It is not an incremental update to the ODS / API, but instead replaces the Ed-Fi ODS / API and ODS Admin API with two new services, the Ed-Fi API and a Configuration Service, built on a new relational storage model (also on SQL Server or PostgreSQL) and deployed using Docker images.

The Ed-Fi Alliance plans to support the ODS/API Platform through the 2028-2029 school year and to fully replace it with Ed-Fi API v8 by the 2029-2030 school year; see the FAQ for the release timeline.

Both platforms are vendor neutral, meaning that the client applications may be written in any language. See the Ed-Fi ODS/API and Ed-Fi API v8 FAQ for a detailed comparison, roadmap, and migration timeline.

Please see the Ed-Fi Technology Suite Supported Versions for an overview of which Data Standard version(s) are supported by a given Ed-Fi API or ODS / API version.

Use the dropdown version control below to select which platform and version's documentation you wish to view. Both the legacy Ed-Fi ODS / API (7.x) and the new Ed-Fi API (8.x) are available: