percipio.london: Metaseed

What is an API?

Wikipedia says that an API is; ​“An application programming interface (API) is a computing interface that defines interactions between multiple software intermediaries.”

In other words, an API allows one system to talk to another. Specifically Metaseed allows us to fetch accurate and reliable data for platforms we support in a fast and uniformed manner.

Introducing Metaseed

Multiple platforms we support require access to school data, geographic information, ONS information, custom shared content or a combination of all of the above. 

Metaseed was born out of a consistent need to share data between systems and a constant battle with handling poorly formatted raw data files. We now have a single platform that can be used to distribute datasets to any other platform that we support.

Having a centralised engine increases not only adds to our development efficiency, but additionally ensures that platforms accessing Metaseed always have access to the most up to date data without any requirement to make changes to their internal systems.

• National Tutoring programme used Metaseed to match schools to tutor partners across England.
• Metaseed is now integrated into Salesforce for school lookup for grant funding.
• The EEF’s Teaching and Learning toolkit is temporarily distributed to various countries around the globe using.
• The Research Schools Network uses metaseed to pinpoint localities of it’s schools to catchment areas and also to capture data engagement on the hundreds of events they run.

What’s next?

Operating on a zero-downtime policy, Metaseed already successfully allows data consumption across the globe to assist organisations to populate evidential Toolkits, school and statistical information

We are currently further developing the service for Metaseed to allow for a greater range of data consumption spanning more datasets over a wider range of sectors.