[sims] How do you edit an assessment Aspect?

[iceman]

I have an aspect that has allows textual grades 4-, 4+, 5- 5+ etc together with associated numerical values.

Data has been entered into this aspect.

 

Now the powers that be want to also allow grades of 4, 5, 6 into this aspect (together with their numerical values)

 

I cannot seem to edit the allowed grades and the help file only shows how to edit things like the aspect name, column heading etc.

 

How do I change the set of allowed grades for an aspect?

 

And on an associated point they also want another aspect changed from marks-integer to marks-decimal so I need to do that as well !

Edited February 7, 2016 by iceman

[iceman]

I've found out how to add the new values to the aspect. I changed the underlying user defined gradeset. That seemed to work.

 

However the gradeset for the other aspect is the sims defined one of marks-integer and I still can't see how I change that to another sims defined one of marks-decimal.

Surely I haven't got to

 

1. Make a new decimal aspect called Aspect_2
   
2. Copy all the existing results over from the integer Aspect_1 to the decimal Aspect_2
   
3. Delete the integer Aspect_1
   
4. Make a new decimal Aspect_1
   
5. Copy all the results over from decimal Aspect_2 to the the new decimal Aspect_1
   
6. Delete Aspect_2
   

 

!!!!

[PhilNeal]

@iceman I think you will need to go through those steps as what you are doing is creating a completely different Aspect. MyAccount users may have a better route for you.

I'd also recommend using our Aspects if you are in a state school - if you use known Aspects we can perform smart calculations on them such as Progress 8 without you having to map your Aspects to ours.

[iceman]

I tried to go through those steps but then got frustrated as I couldn't delete the original aspect because it was used somewhere, but SIMS wouldn't tell me where. It wasn't in all the places I would expect it to be. I think I'll give up with that one and just round the numbers I need to input.

 

There really is no reason why sims can't alter the data type of an aspect. It happily allows you to copy between different numeric types and does the conversion for you. Even being able to globally rename an aspect wouild be handy and this should be possible as well since they are all just aliases.

I think there is still a great deal of Dbase4 baggage around in sims. (Come to think of it I used to be able to manipulate the data in all those DB4 files much easier than I can now!)

 

The data in sims is really only used for data input, all the processing is done outside of sims in another SQL database and specialist reports created from there so there is some limits on the aspect names I can use but I'll have alook at the built in ones. - Although I'll probably still have the same issue deleting the ones I have now.

[RootsSchImp]

Hi Iceman,

 

You can't delete an aspect in Focus| Assessment if it has results or is used on templates. Best approach is to make a report for all students with fields name, dob, adno, aspect, resultset so you've got a back up of all the results in excel. (a number of subreports filtered for each resultset would reduce the amount of messing around in excel but more than three subreports might be too complex for sims to handle)

 

After that, go to Tools| Performance| System Utilities| Results to delete all the results then same path ...aspects will let you delete the aspect.

[PhilNeal]

@iceman - in principle I can see why changing the definition of an Aspect could invalidate data that is already in the system - hence not being allowed to do it.

Whether this applies to the type of change you are trying to make, I'm not sure.

[iceman]

@PhilNeal Yes you are right if SIMS treats this in a simplistic manner, You obviously cannot convert a textual data type into a numerical one if it already contains the value 'Fred'. But there are several routes by which databases will allow data type changes - or at least should do.

 

If all the data in the aspect has been deleted, which I had already done using the method that RootsSchImp mentioned, then there would be no conversion issues.

Secondly, if the data type is changing from a base type to a derived type. In my case that is what I wanted to do, change an integer type to a floating point type. Every integer can be expressed as a floating point value as the field size is increasing (clearly it is more problematic the other way round but SIMS handles it when you copy/paste columns) .

 

SIMs could even change the data type using one line of SQL executed against its back end database

 

ALTER TABLE TheTableName ALTER COLUMN TheAspectName float;

 

The only issue would be if the aspect is used as a foreign key to another table. But if so it would make sense to for SIMS to have set the constraints so that changes in the FK are rippled through anyway.

 

Never mind, thanks to all who replied. I deal mainly with SQL databases and the odd user interface of SIMS always frustrates me. It seems to get in the way more than help. This is evident by the many answers in this forum which, whilst absolutely correct, usually involve lengthy, repetitive manual operations in SIMS to get something simple done.

[bobsmith]

I don't get why you are deleting aspects at any point in this evolution?

 

 

 

Make a new decimal aspect called Aspect_2

Copy all the existing results over from the integer Aspect_1 to the decimal Aspect_2

stop here!!!

[iceman]

Its more of a convenience than a necessity.

 

I have templates and mark books that use Aspect_1 and reports that export it so they would all need to be changed to use Aspect_2 and, more importantly, so would all the follow up processing done by the external database and analysis system as it needs to know what the aspect is called.

 

But either way, without deleting the Aspect_1 SIMS gets even more cluttered up with yet more aspects that aren't used by anything.

[CAM]

If you are using grades (which with 4+, 5+, etc you should be) you use versioning to accomplish changes.

 

Go into the aspect and find out what gradeset you want to use. Then go to the gradeset and click New in the version panel. Enter your new set of grades and save. You should now have a version that runs from today and the old version from when it was created to the day before. This change should automatically propagate to all Aspects using that result set. Now, if you enter data into that aspect, you can enter the new grades (in this case whole numbers alongside +/-). If you rewind the date to the day before the new version kicks in, you can only enter the old grades from the old version (in this case only +/- no whole numbers). This prevents the need to delete all data in the aspect before making the change as old data can be retained and old validation rules can still be enforced.

 

The integer to decimal is just poor communication from management as to what they want. You'll have to make do with re-creating every aspect.

[bobsmith]

Its more of a convenience than a necessity.

 

I have templates and mark books that use Aspect_1 and reports that export it so they would all need to be changed to use Aspect_2 and, more importantly, so would all the follow up processing done by the external database and analysis system as it needs to know what the aspect is called.

 

But either way, without deleting the Aspect_1 SIMS gets even more cluttered up with yet more aspects that aren't used by anything.

 

Renaming the aspect probably won't enable the old reports and mark sheets to work, as the aspects use the hidden id, the name is just an alias afaik. I strongly suspect you'll need to rebuild all of them.

[iceman]

Thanks but I sorted out the grade set thing within minutes of posting my question (as usual).

poor communication from management as to what they want

What!!? Surely not. Never heard of such a thing.

 

Actually they communicated quite clearly, its just the idiots devising this project hadn't thought through the implications before they communicated.

If only they would simply tell me what knowledge or information they wanted to get and left me to work out how to get it from the data it would be done by now.

[vikpaw]

The simplest way to sort the integer to decimal issue seems like this:

Rename Aspect 1 to Aspect 1_old

Create new Aspect 1 as Decimal

Copy data from Aspect 1_old to Aspect 1 (Decimal)

Don't delete anything but update all marksheets to use the new aspect and slowly convert existing report templates.

 

Depending on how much old data there is to migrate, I often would do this in situ in a marksheet, so add the columns side by side and copy paste over as a whole year group. It's slower but nice to see it and check it's ok.

 

Until you're done with the conversion at least all the data still exists and is accessible, even if you do it as you go through the cycle and need to collect more data, though I'm sure like me you'll want to just sit down one night and plough through the lot.

[iceman]

Thanks Vikpaw, that's essentially where I had got to.

 

Fortunately only one single value had been entered into the aspect. The SIMS manager had entered the number 38 for one student and then tried to enter 27.6 for the next one, that's when they discovered the problem! My main issue is that this aspect, along with many others, is only really used for data entry and then exported overnight to an external SQL database and processed from there in another program.

 

That program looks for the aspect name Aspect_1 in the database in order to decide what to do with it. If I change the templates and reports to use the name Aspect_2 instead, then the external database needs to be changed, the external system changed to use Aspect_2 everywhere where it used to use Aspect_1 and then recompiled and re-distributed to everyone that uses it.

 

That's much more work than simply deleting Aspect_1 in SIMS and recreating it as a decimal one.

But deleting it has defeated me so far as SIMS keeps telling me its being used, even though I've deleted the data in this aspect and removed any reference to it from the template, mark sheets and reports that used to use it.

[bobsmith]

there are some reports in SIMS that you can run to track down those pesky results making the aspect "live". I tweaked mine, but I based them off the ones under focus - aspects and focus - results.

[vikpaw]

Can't you rename it to aspect temp though and then it will let you make a new aspect_1 assuming your system reads the name only.

The templates will still need refreshing even though the name is the same because they use a hidden code to reference the aspect by its ID

[iceman]

OK fixed it.

I wrote a report to show me aspects and templates and found it in a dummy test template that I had made nearly 6 months ago and had completely forgotten about (as you mentioned, Bobsmith).

Deleted that template and then it was a five minute job to delete the aspect in question, recreate it with the same name but as decimal and pop it back into the proper template in place of the integer one.

 

All that effort because the Dep. Head told me they would only ever need integers stored in that aspect - except when they don't!

[iceman]

@vicpaw

Yes, I export the aspectID and use that in my database as a PK, but that's quite easy to ripple through if/when the ID changes on recreation.