SIMS.net Business Object - Why So Damn Hard?

[penfold_99]

Please can someone explain why it is so damn hard to implement SIMS.net Business Objects?

The documentation you are given to work with is serverly lacking but have finally been able to login using them.

Even the simplest task like get all students is an epic challenge. which currently i haven't been able to over come.

Well Rant Over.

[Tonyoung]

perhaps the Business objects are designed for use by professional developers . It was my understanding that Capita's partners use specific documentation supplied for their needs - have you considered investing in some consultancy ?

[matt40k]

I'll donate 50p to your project Penfold, I think SIMS and Moodle is a good idea. Let's see, I think would cover 1 sec of Capita's time.

[penfold_99]

perhaps the Business objects are designed for use by professional developers .

Personally i would like to see if you could do any better!

It was my understanding that Capita's partners use specific documentation supplied for their needs - have you considered investing in some consultancy ?

Do you really think capita would the following.

1. Send a Programmer to a School?
2. Allow us to be charged for a day's consulting to create a web service when Phil Neal quoted £50,000 for capita to do the same thing.
3. Actually Accredit the software knowing that if will be offered for free?

I belive Capitas documentation is standard if it isn't then it is acting anti-competitively by with holding it.

[rpwillis]

In my career as a developer I've used far worse object models. Once you get used to it's quirks it's actually reasonably internally consistent.

To produce a product which they will have to support long-term, there's a lot costs. It's not just x developers for y days. There's also a lot of work and pain involved making it work for multiple schools as every site is slightly different.

[Tonyoung]

Personally i would like to see if you could do any better!

But I am not employed as a professional developer - Richard is - are you ?

Do you really think capita would the following.

1. Send a Programmer to a School?
2. Allow us to be charged for a day's consulting to create a web service when Phil Neal quoted £50,000 for capita to do the same thing.
3. Actually Accredit the software knowing that if will be offered for free?

1. Probably not
2. Probably yes
3. I suspect your problem is licensing your solution rather than accreditation. How are you going to avoid invalidating SIMS warranty for all those schools who write back - assuming that's what you want to do from Moodle to SIMS ?

I belive Capitas documentation is standard if it isn't then it is acting anti-competitively by with holding it.

Correct it's just they appear to supply additional code examples and specific training for partners.

[matt40k]

1. I suspect your problem is licensing your solution rather than accreditation. How are you going to avoid invalidating SIMS warranty for all those schools who write back - assuming that's what you want to do from Moodle to SIMS ?

He's using the business model therefore it won't invalid your (the Schools) warranty.

I think penfold_99 taking alot of slack for this work. I don't agree with him access the MSSQL directly, so the fact he's now accessing SIMS though the correct method I think is great. Alot of people we be worried when it's finished. Hopefully this will cause them to step up rather then slate penfold_99 work.

I think companies should be looking at offering support for this open source solution if there "professional" coders can't make anything better and stop trying to reinvent the "wheel". The project embodies what has make Microsoft the most popular OS, modular design, each bit does it's job and it does it well, rather then having to recreate drivers for each application.

Anyway, that's my thoughts.


(Please note I have nothing to do with SIMS2Moodle - This is entirely Penfold baby)