name: University of Oxford — API lifecycle
description: >-
  Oxford's programmable estate has a documented history of decommissioning, and that history is
  the most useful lifecycle signal in this profile. The University once ran one of the better
  known public university open-data programmes in the UK; it was retired without a successor,
  and the surfaces that remain today are library and repository infrastructure that predates and
  outlived it.
generated: '2026-08-19'
method: probed
source: live DNS and HTTP probes 2026-08-19, cross-read against review.yml
stages:
  - api: ORA OAI-PMH
    stage: production
    x-operator: institution
    since: '2018'
    detail: >-
      The current ORA website dates from April 2018 and Oxford documents that OAI-PMH
      datestamps do not predate it. The identifier scheme changed at that cutover and Oxford
      publishes a migration rule for harvesters holding pre-2018 identifiers — genuine
      versioning discipline, communicated in prose rather than in a contract.
    maintenance_window: Tuesdays 07:00-09:00 UK time
  - api: ORA search / object JSON
    stage: undocumented
    x-operator: institution
    detail: >-
      Live and stable in shape, but Oxford has never announced it, versioned it or promised
      anything about it. Treat as internal-facing infrastructure that happens to answer.
  - api: Digital Bodleian IIIF
    stage: production
    x-operator: institution
    detail: >-
      Image API 2.1, Presentation API 2.1 and Change Discovery API 1.0 — all major-version 2/1
      IIIF, i.e. current-but-not-latest (IIIF Presentation 3.0 has been available since 2020).
      The change discovery stream gives consumers a supported incremental-sync path, which is a
      lifecycle affordance most repositories lack.
  - api: Oxford Text Archive OAI-PMH
    stage: maintained
    x-operator: institution
    detail: >-
      Live, but showing age: earliest datestamp 2019, an OLAC archive description last reviewed
      2020-02-26, and an unresolved template variable in the OLAC access field.
  - api: Shibboleth Identity Provider
    stage: production
    x-operator: institution
    detail: >-
      Signing certificate issued 2026-05-15, valid to 2046-05-15 — recently rotated. Two test
      IdPs are registered in the federation alongside production, which is a healthy sign.
retired:
  - api: Oxford Open Data Service (data.ox.ac.uk)
    stage: decommissioned
    detail: >-
      OxPoints linked data, places, courses and vacancies over REST, SPARQL and a JavaScript
      API. The domain still exists but publishes no A/AAAA record. No successor was published
      and no deprecation notice survives at a reachable URL.
    evidence:
      - url: https://data.ox.ac.uk/
        status: 0
  - api: Mobile Oxford API (api.m.ox.ac.uk)
    stage: decommissioned
    detail: NXDOMAIN.
    evidence:
      - url: https://api.m.ox.ac.uk/
        status: 0
  - api: Open Data Service documentation (docs.data.ox.ac.uk)
    stage: decommissioned
    detail: NXDOMAIN. The documentation went with the service.
    evidence:
      - url: https://docs.data.ox.ac.uk/
        status: 0
  - api: WebLearn (weblearn.ox.ac.uk)
    stage: decommissioned
    detail: >-
      The former Sakai VLE. The host still answers but returns 404 on the root; teaching has
      moved to the Canvas tenancy recorded in apis.yml.
    evidence:
      - url: https://weblearn.ox.ac.uk/
        status: 404
observations:
  - >-
    No changelog, release notes, versioning policy or deprecation policy exists for any live
    Oxford API surface. The retirement of the open-data programme was, as far as any reachable
    URL shows, silent.
  - >-
    There is no status page for any of the API surfaces. status.it.ox.ac.uk covers IT Services
    systems generally and does not list ORA, Digital Bodleian or the OAI-PMH endpoints.