[CMIS] [Facility] Automation

[howsono]

Anyone know a way of running a CMIS/facility report from a shortcut?

I'm thinking something like cmis.exe -u:me -p:secret -dataset:201516.cdb -report:xyx >> out.csv but don't have a clue.

 

thanks

[pcstru]

Well .... not exactly (not using an actual report developed in CMIS). I used to extract data directly from the database via either excel or powershell. I've published code for both :

 

Powershell : http://www.edugeek.net/forums/coding/120056-powershell-cmis-student-list-pipe.html

 

Excel VBA : http://www.edugeek.net/forums/mis-systems/84151-cmis-excel-vba-functions.html

[john]

@robk does various funky thing with CMIS maybe he can help....

[howsono]

Hope he responds then!

[robk]

@howsono what are you wanting to do? There is no command line reporter, you can read the database directly, but I should stress that Advanced Learning do not support this.

@pcstru 's powershell scripts look very similar to what I may do with vbscript...

[howsono]

I want to be able to pull the data out and do stuff with it - in Excel or PHP preferably. And I want this to happen automagically. Our access is through username/password which is not linked to active directory and getting the IT team to set up anything non-standard is a no-no (I'm a CS teacher and it's taken me EIGHT YEARS to get anything other than IE on the network).

Everything I want to do is read-only.

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

Oh and don't think I've got powershell access! VBA could work - if I can provide u/p instead of relying on AD setup.

[pcstru]

If you really wanted to automate the production of a CMIS report, you could use a windows macro recorder/replay thingmabob. Put it inside a VM with CMIS available and it should be extremely reliable.

[pcstru]

Oh and don't think I've got powershell access! VBA could work - if I can provide u/p instead of relying on AD setup.

If you mean the user credentials you have to login to the CMIS client software, then no.

[bobsmith]

I did a lot of work along these lines when I used to have CMIS.

 

It is often possible to produce better reports directly through SQL than it was through CMIS itself. They also run a hell of a lot faster by bypassing their clunky processing.

 

You can set them up as as a job in SQL manager and schedule them. Outputting to XML then gives you the capability of doing stuff with php, excel or whatever else you want for displaying the data.

 

Oh and to stay on the good side of the Advanced Learning engineers - set up the SQL account that will process all of this with READ ONLY permissions. That way it will be impossible for you to mess up the DB and you will have evidence if anyone ever questions it that you can not have caused any issues they try passing off to you.

Edited October 16, 2015 by bobsmith

[pcstru]

Oh and to stay on the good side of the Advanced Learning engineers - set up the SQL account that will process all of this with READ ONLY permissions. That way it will be impossible for you to mess up the DB and you will have evidence if anyone ever questions it that you can not have caused any issues they try passing off to you.

It _is_ possible to cause issues with read only access. You can severely impact performance and (in CMIS) end up locking users out (try running the powershell I posted without the control C catch and using control C to break). Developing SQL queries should never be done against a production database, but often is (and yes, guilty as charged).

[bobsmith]

Guilty as charged myself, however as I said in my post - schedule them (by which i mean out of hours!).

[howsono]

Hrm - SQLManager - even that is dodgey difficult in this place. Waiting for chap to get back to me about API. One example - we sent letters when students get 10 negatives in a term. So every morning an admin has to log on and run a report, move things around, mail merge etc... I want an automatic list emailed to directors each morning.

[bobsmith]

Within CMIS that was easy peasy, a quick bit of SQL to extract the data and you could output it to excel as part of the job and then set it up to email out.

 

Of course if you can write a report within SIMs to do the crunching (good luck) then you can have command reporter run it each night and have it appear on their home screen in SIMS (that's the gist I got anyway).