What Reactions Is. And What Reactions is not.
We’ve been a bit overwhelmed by the interest in Reactions since our announcement two days ago.
There is already a lot of chatter about what Reactions can and can not do. And we think that’s an exciting conversation. We’ll be holding a free webinar on Thursday 01 February at 3:00 PM EST to demonstrate how to use Reactions and to discuss use cases. We invite you to attend. Please register here.
In advance of the webinar, we thought it would be a good idea to give a quick high-level overview of the things that Reactions can and can’t do. So, let’s go…
What Reactions Is
Reactions is a new feature of the open source Apache 2.0 SQL LRS.
Reactions makes assertions as xAPI statements.
It bases those assertions on conditional logic applied to xAPI statements entering into SQL LRS.
The entire process is wholly contained within SQL LRS.
That’s it, basically.
Now, the use cases are innumerable because that conditional logic is only limited by your imagination and your approach to designing xAPI data statements. But at its core, Reactions is a method of applying conditional logic to things happening within SQL LRS.
What Reactions Is Not
Reactions is not a general integration tool. In fact, it’s not an integration tool at all. It doesn’t do anything like Zapier or whathaveyou. It simply produces new xAPI data within SQL LRS based on the conditions programmed into a Reaction.
Reactions is not a competency engine or a credentialing engine or any other kind of opinionated engine. It is an assertion mechanism for rendering business logic as xAPI within SQL LRS.
It is xAPI-specific and works exclusively within SQL LRS.
Can you assert competencies and credentials with Reactions? Well, that is entirely up to you. Because with Reactions, you have the conditional logic and computing power to assert ANYTHING. The resulting data will be valid xAPI.
Reactions is not an automation engine. While you can use xAPI assertions to automate processes — just like you can use any xAPI data to automate processes — Reactions itself only automates the generation of newly asserted xAPI data statements. One of the advantages is that you get to design and choose the conditions that comprise your Reaction. Nothing happens in a Black Box. There is no magic. It’s just straightforward logic. And it is completely transparent.
Note that what you do with the assertions you create is entirely up to you. That data can be used to target any number of use cases. We’ll discuss a few on the webinar. In the meantime, feel free to grab the code and start experimenting.