System Interface Guidelines

The Interagency Electronic Reporting System (eLandings) team is committed to fostering, encouraging and supporting integration into third-party applications. The eLandings team is very interested in achieving one-time data entry of data required of fishermen and processors by State and/or Federal government,or requested by industry.

To support this goal, the eLandings team provides documetation and guidelines for your assistance and to establish expectations.

All eLandings System documentation and resources are located at: https://elandings.alaska.gov/confluence/display/doc/eLandings+Users+Guide

The eLandings development team request that you carefully review all documentation prior to contacting the eLandings developers. Third-party developers, who opt to design their application to interface with the eLandings web pages may not feel that some of the documentation is applicable to their development. The eLandings team understands these sentiments but would encourage developers to read these documents. The documention provides an explation the eLandings structure and functionality, and may provide answers to questions, in ways that are applicable but may not be immediately obvious.

The eLandings team can provide the following:

Web pages to import and export eLandings data
Documentation on the import and export features and capabilities
A limited set of web services for third-party consumption
These web services are in large measure isolated from eLandings active development to create a stable environment for third-party developers.
Documentation on the public web services
An online site to download a limited set of the latest XSD files defining eLandings XML objects
An online site to perform limited validation on XML objects produced by third party tools to assure valid eLandings XML structure

Due to limited resources, the eLandings team must limit the support we can provide. The eLandings team cannot provide:

eLandings program and/or system code (beyond limited examples if available)
Modification and/or redistribution authorization of eLandings front end applications
Direct access to the eLandings database
Web services for submission of Individual Fisheries Quota (IFQ) data
Guaranteed\timely system modifications. Requests must be reviewed, prioritized, and may ultimately be rejected

The eLandings team can provided limited support, as resources allow, for the following:

Third-party software interface debugging
Third-party generated XML debugging
Third-party technical guidance, when it cannot be found in the available online documentation

The eLandings import and export web pages and public web services are made available to the public in an "as is" state. The eLandings XML and XSD files may be freely distributed in a stand-alone state or within a third-party application.

The eLandings team has attempted to create general systems that meet the needs of a large user group. The eLandings team ask that third-party developers limit their requests to general system improvements and bug fixes. Customizations designed to meet a small subset of the user group should be implemented within third-party applications.

The eLandings team recognizes that third-party developers will run into questions that they cannot answer using the online documentation or through experimentation within the eLandings Training system. The documentation and system are constantly under active development. When these resources are exhausted, it is appropriate to direct questions to the eLandings email group, elandings@alaska.gov. Using this email group will help your questions reach someone who can answer your question. We would discourage initially contacting a specific eLandings team member as they may be out of the office or allocated to other tasks.