Pros and Cons of SSRS/MS Report Builder

[pcstru]

BECTA saying LA's are not doing procurement correctly, is quite different to saying the providers of the MIS are not providing products that give value.

[bigdannyb79]

BECTA saying LA's are not doing procurement correctly, is quite different to saying the providers of the MIS are not providing products that give value.

 

Tbf if you read the doc it pretty clearly implied that too - I was picking up on the point on what contributed to the market position, which in my opinion has resulted in poor value for schools.

[pcstru]

Tbf if you read the doc it pretty clearly implied that too - I was picking up on the point on what contributed to the market position, which in my opinion has resulted in poor value for schools.

Your original point said "My point at present is you have a premium price wihtout the premium functionality". The BECTA report does not evidence that, rather it says that LA's were not procuring MIS systems in a way that complies with EU competition law.

 

I think to say that MIS systems are overpriced and under deliver, you would need to know about the cash flow of the MIS delivery process. You are basically saying they are charging too much. Having worked in similar large scale software development, I think people (including MIS providers (CMIS->Progressso, or how about SIMS 7?)) hugely underestimate the effort required for the delivery of those products to an acceptable quality.

[bigdannyb79]

That wasn't my original point. My later point on value comes from simple price/feature comparison of current market including associated costs.

[pcstru]

That wasn't my original point. My later point on value comes from simple price/feature comparison of current market including associated costs.

Ah, right. Could you link to that price/feature comparison? It would no doubt be of interest to a number of people here and anyone thinking of changing supplier. I'm not sure how it will evidence the production costs but it would be interesting nerveless.

 

I'd have to say that when we did a comparison during the supplier selection phase of our MIS replacement project, it wasn't obvious that any supplier was providing significantly more or less features than any other - especially when it comes to reporting. Our choices were more about usability ease of use. In terms of cost, it is not surprising that (say) Bromcom with a web service is cheaper than SIMS delivering multiple technologies all of which have to talk to a single database, so saying one is overcharging on the basis that they both deliver the same broad feature, is likely specious.

[Bromcom_Marketing]

Your original point said "My point at present is you have a premium price wihtout the premium functionality". The BECTA report does not evidence that, rather it says that LA's were not procuring MIS systems in a way that complies with EU competition law.

 

I think to say that MIS systems are overpriced and under deliver, you would need to know about the cash flow of the MIS delivery process. You are basically saying they are charging too much. Having worked in similar large scale software development, I think people (including MIS providers (CMIS->Progressso, or how about SIMS 7?)) hugely underestimate the effort required for the delivery of those products to an acceptable quality.

Please see: http://www.edugeek.net/forums/mis-systems/189059-mis-systems-overpriced-under-deliver.html#post1616662

[Banjo]

I think the world has moved on since Becta produced that report. It has become more diverse with reduced barriers to entry into the marketplace.

[Bromcom_Marketing]

I think the world has moved on since Becta produced that report. It has become more diverse with reduced barriers to entry into the marketplace.

 

Since 2010:

• 
  
• Becta Report advice to LAs and schools on compliance to procurement law stand the same because procurement law has not changed.
  
• Becta Report key findings on LA procurement practices stand the same because no LA has been coming out to tender and market dominance continued the same level.
  
• Reduced barriers to entry? Barriers into the marketplace will stay the same unless LAs come out to tender. MATs are going out to tender.
  
• More diverse? Since the Becta Report in 2010 - more companies left the MIS market than new ones come in!
  

 

Consequently since 2010 in summary the LAs stayed put whilst the MATS are leading the switch to Cloud.

[bigdannyb79]

I think the world has moved on since Becta produced that report. It has become more diverse with reduced barriers to entry into the marketplace.

 

Maybe a bit but once you have market share of 80% plus that takes time to break apart so in reality, for the customer, the scenario in terms of competition in the market place hasn't really changed at all.

 

And if you see the marketing coming out of some LA's for their MIS (by that they mean SIMS only) & ICT support (often with little separation) you would still think SIMS is the only MIS - and makes me laugh when the LA data teams have to deal will a different MIS its almost like you have offended them. I had a LA SEN team almost cease funding at one point as their data extraction tool wasn't working with Progresso and they were firmly putting the blame at the school despite it being their solution and reported "it works with other schools" - by this they meant it worked with SIMS schools.

 

So the world has moved on but I dont think it is where it should be.

 

I'll add I used to work directly within an LA so have some insight . . .

[CAM]

OK, SIMS is down in mid-census panic and nothing I can do right now. Might as well chip in...

 

 

My primary concern is the MIS market isn't meeting the same industry standards used elsewhere. I've spoken often about my own lack of SQL experience primarily due to SIMS not providing a means of using it to obtain data, and I often feel what I want is locked away and difficult to access. Instead of writing a script and generating data that I can plug into another system, I am limited to a preset list of report items that I have to carry out manual work on in order to get it into a format that I can use. I've been to job interviews where I have described the process of extracting data from SIMS into a file to work on it and the seen the interviewer's face curl up in disgust because I'm not fetching the data directly from SIMS.

 

I have a friend who works in the private sector who laughed when I described how schools transfer data between sites with CTF files and cringed when I describe having to export all behaviour incidents from SIMS, convert the dates and numbers from text (WHY ARE YOU STILL DOING THIS CAPITA????) and pivoting the data because SIMS cannot provide me with individual incidents occurring on a specific date range in the reporting tool. Something I could fetch with a few lines of SQL in seconds.

 

Even though we live in the Information Age where organisations are swimming in data and taking advantage of it, we lack so many basic tools used in other industries that education data feels like it is in the stone age.

[Geoff]

Give me 30mins with a SIMs database and I'll write your report. It really isn't difficult if you know what you are doing with SQL studio. No matter how convoluted the database design is.

[RootsSchImp]

Give me 30mins with a SIMs database and I'll write your report. It really isn't difficult if you know what you are doing with SQL studio. No matter how convoluted the database design is.

 

@Geoff Great confidence! Just to be clear are you talking about using SQL Database Studio to query the SIMS tables directly? Have you ever done that/set it up? Do you/anyone know if it bypasses SIMS user permissions?

 

Ed

[pcstru]

@Geoff Great confidence! Just to be clear are you talking about using SQL Database Studio to query the SIMS tables directly? Have you ever done that/set it up? Do you/anyone know if it bypasses SIMS user permissions?

Yes it will bypass SIMS permissions. I do not know of any MIS that enforces user permissions at the schema level, it is all application driven so any direct access to the tables will simply ignore any permissions set in the application.

[Geoff]

What @pcstru says is correct. As I referenced before, in a normal ETL scenario you wouldn't just bang out a report based on a SQL query, but it is possible as a quick and dirty solution.

 

In full ETL implementations you have an entire reporting suite that has full role based permissions (You can also apply RBAC on your data cubes too). As we are talking about MS SQL the ETL bit is likely to be SSIS (Although you can handcraft SQL scripts instead of pointy clicky SSIS) and the reporting is likely to be Sharepoint.

 

You should strive for full ETL, this is bringing you kicking and screaming into the 1990's of Business Intelligence.

[Bromcom_Marketing]

What @pcstru says is correct. As I referenced before, in a normal ETL scenario you wouldn't just bang out a report based on a SQL query, but it is possible as a quick and dirty solution.

 

In full ETL implementations you have an entire reporting suite that has full role based permissions (You can also apply RBAC on your data cubes too). As we are talking about MS SQL the ETL bit is likely to be SSIS (Although you can handcraft SQL scripts instead of pointy clicky SSIS) and the reporting is likely to be Sharepoint.

 

You should strive for full ETL, this is bringing you kicking and screaming into the 1990's of Business Intelligence.

 

 

@Geoff you certainly know your stuff but how many out of 100 Primaries and how many out of 100 Secondaries are likely to have an SQL skilled staff like yourself?

 

In fact even not many MATs either is likely to have SQL or MS Report Builder skilled staff! We are happy to be corrected.

[pcstru]

Please see: http://www.edugeek.net/forums/mis-systems/189059-mis-systems-overpriced-under-deliver.html#post1616662

It does not address the points I made.

 

SIMS have an 80% market share in England and Wales, as much as anything because they were early to market. That also encumbers them with supporting a legacy that is both broad (people pushing the database functionally right now) and deep (people with historic data which it is difficult to cater for in any migration while retaining quality and utility). So any claim to the product being overpriced has to speak to the particular challenges they face and the costs of supporting that. Most people underestimate the relatively simple challenge of developing a new MIS from scratch! SIMS have the horror of having ~20,000 customers to maintain, move on and eventually, migrate. That ... has to be a whole new level of difficult.

 

ETA - I'm not saying anyone is or is not providing value, what I am saying is that value is not evidenced just by market share or the product cost.

Edited October 10, 2017 by pcstru

[matt40k]

Learning SQL makes sense. If you have an opportunity to learn it, do it. From a schools point of view, if you go down this route, you must accept folks will move on and you need to have a continuous rolling plan to bring in new blood. The job market at the moment for data folks is nuts and its going to get worse - private sector is paying 2-3x times the public sector is paying AND they have better terms and benefits.

 

Just for goodness sake, backup\restore a test copy of the database and work on the test copy.

 

 

 

Notwithstanding the clear recommendation in the 2005 report, the 2010 Market Study reported that:

“It is clear that many LAs do not fully understand their legal obligation to conduct EU compliant

procurements for the provision of MIS, or how frequently such an exercise should be undertaken.

We estimate that, depending on the outcome of legal advice being sought by Becta, between 60%

and 80% of local authorities could be in breach of EU procurement requirements with regards to

how they acquire MIS”.

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

Its in a public document not my words.

 

Interesting. Quoting a 7+ year old document that says "estimate", provides no reference data and is by department (whatever) that no longer exists.

 

 

 

Anyway, good luck to the folks who are busy changing the future rather then bashing at the past.

[bigdannyb79]

When I talk about value its quite simple - the benefit schools get from the money spent. I don't even know what point your trying to make pcstru, if one at all rather just argue a point or indeed any point.

 

Schools need to be more aware of market choice as many aren't getting value for money but don't even know of all the alternatives and LA's touting traded services help support the monopoly they created.

 

SIMS is a limited aged product that hasn't been invested in and developed despite the significant income generated from their customer base - other companies have brought products to market with a fraction of the customer base and resources available to them.

 

Having a lot of customers is not an excuse for not developing or I'd still be using windows 3.11 that I got on my first computer.

 

I know from schools I work with they will be better off when they change from the legacy MIS they use as the functionality they need they can get cheaper in a more accessible package from alternative suppliers. The reason for my original contribution was to prompt that thought process of 'Is my MIS best fit and best value for my organisation'. I'll leave it at that but will continue to ask that question when people come on here looking to get simple outputs from their MIS and having to look at other products and solutions to achieve the desired result.

[TechMonkey]

@Geoff you certainly know your stuff but how many out of 100 Primaries and how many out of 100 Secondaries are likely to have an SQL skilled staff like yourself?

 

In fact even not many MATs either is likely to have SQL or MS Report Builder skilled staff! We are happy to be corrected.

 

These days I would expect most secondaries and large primaries to have a Data Manager, who should have SQL skills. Maybe not to Geoff's skills, but to an intermediate level with the schools willing to send them on training

 

I have no direct experience, bar an ex-colleague who went that way, but I would have thought MATs and Academy chains would be more likely to have a shared SQL whizz as the cost would be spread and the benefits would be more desired.

 

I guess the other way to look at is, are SQL experts the IT Managers of the future age? It took a long time for schools to realise they needed IT staff, that they needed IT Managers, that an IT specialist on SMT is a good idea. Will the same process happen with Data specialists? Commercial organisations have been banging on about data, data usage and data tools, why wouldn't schools follow?

 

Will the exceptional, visionary schools be those that embrace data?

[matt40k]

still be using windows 3.11 that I got on my first computer.

It's depressing how many schools upgraded because Capita stopped supporting Win95/XP :'(

[Banjo]

Since 2010:

• 
  
• Becta Report advice to LAs and schools on compliance to procurement law stand the same because procurement law has not changed.
  
• Becta Report key findings on LA procurement practices stand the same because no LA has been coming out to tender and market dominance continued the same level.
  
• Reduced barriers to entry? Barriers into the marketplace will stay the same unless LAs come out to tender. MATs are going out to tender.
  
• More diverse? Since the Becta Report in 2010 - more companies left the MIS market than new ones come in!
  

 

Consequently since 2010 in summary the LAs stayed put whilst the MATS are leading the switch to Cloud.

Becta no longer exists, tha academy/free school program has changed the educational landscape. EU procurement regs will likely cease in 18 months’ time. Schools now have more choice in the type of MIS and the differing capabilities and functionality that they now offer - More of the same is not necessarily a good thing, and we don't need a homogeneous marketplace. (diverse doesn't mean more)

[Ditto]

Picked up this thread on the title "Pros and Cons of SSRS/MS Report Builder" and read from backwards starting at the latest posts. It seems to have drifted somewhat!

 

Getting back to the OP posting, I think many valid points have been made. As an ex programmer, I've managed to work with SSRS in progresso with minimal but necessary training from Advanced Learning. Most of my work has been creating copies of OOB reports and tailoring it to our needs. At some point I hope to build some other reports from scratch. I've never found SQL knowledge to be the issue, more the quirkiness of the Report builder tool and the structure (or not) of the progresso data model. I know from experience, get the data structures wrong and you pay the price forever thereafter. The points about schema design are spot on - this model is downright odd in it's structure! They are starting to move to shared dataset model which might help, but on several requests progresso support advise me even the developers don't have access to a schema diagram - hard to believe! On the Report builder, the whole row/column grouping takes a while to get used to and it's a nightmare to debug what you're doing.

 

For me, the bottom line is the core MIS product should provide you with the vast majority of what all schools need. It ought to provide a reasonably flexible means at getting at the underlying data so you can create ad-hoc queries. Whether that's via a pure ETL route or with a reporting tool, I don't mind too much. If the school has the luxury of someone capable of using SSRS or any other ETL/Data Warehouse, BI, Reporting, Analytic or other tool, then great. But it has it's risks. The point about dependency on future MIS changes is noted. At my school it's just me with the skills and if I move on they'd really struggle to find a replacement with SSRS without substantially upping the money. Often there is a tweak to end of year reports (some slightly sloppy implementation on my part ).

[vikpaw]

We use Engage by Double First, and the report builder is a nice easy to use wizard. It does have an advanced function where you can essentially do query build like you would in Access with the graphical tables.

For those that are able, the SQL can be exploited, on an advanced course they will supply a map of the tables we can access and then you can just pipe your own query in to a report. I do this all the time and can get great results with complex joins.

 

The other clever thing is that the reporting engine uses something called Stimulsoft to parse and display the returned SQL results. I don't like it much, and it helps to know a bit of C#, the results however are amazing, including the ability to request user input to pipe into the query.

[Banjo]

You can also do some pretty cool stuff with https://www.tableau.com/

 

FFT are using it https://public.tableau.com/profile/fftedu3897#!/ If you could point this at your MIS db you could produce some interesting profiles.

[matt40k]

Can't poke Tableau public at SQL - only Excel \ CSVs etc. And would you want too? Seems like a nice way to expose sensitive data I know North Yorks has done some amazing things as has Ark