VLE and SIMS (MIS) Intergration

[danIT]

I currently work with and support Moodle in our school, we love it and didnt really look around all that much at alternatives because we host it our selves and do a lot of the development in-house.

 

Speaking to local schools and techies on EduGeek im hearing over and over again the new buzz word "SIMS intergration".

 

What i would like to know is what other VLE/MLE system out there have SIMS intergration and on what level?

 

E.g: We do a SIMS extraction of pupils timetables and teacher timetables and tie them together in Moodle. So we boast SIMS intergration (of sorts).

 

But do the other VLE system offer a live link, or a nightly update process for example?

 

In short...how do they do it?

[CyberNerd]

In short, it works like this:

 

get SIMS working with Active Directory first. Ideally SIMS will autocreate the users in AD. At the very least you need a field that in LDAP (AD) that has the students UPN number and the employeetype as student or teacher that matches your SIMS.

 

In the SIMS SQL server, create a view that shows the Course, Person and the Roll.

Moodle will automatically talk to an MSSQL server - this way when a user logs on it gets their courses out of SIMS automatically - and assigns the teacher and student to their appropriate roles. Login will still be done with LDAP - so moodle will map the LDAP fields to the appropriate fields in AD.

 

What it doesn't do (yet) is write data back to SIMS (IMS?/SIF?). Moodle (1.9) has a pretty funky question/answer/targets that ideally should feed back to SIMS. Best we can do is export grades to a spreadsheet and copy and paste into sims. The commercial VLEs will offer this level of integration.

 

http://www.edugeek.net/forums/virtual-learning-platforms/13309-moodle-sims-integration.html

[danIT]

Thanks for that CyberN, were not really bothered about live updates were happy with the manual update.

 

But how do the other commerical VLE's do it?

 

Listening device on a server and some kind of software on the SIMS box that communicates with the remote serveR?

[Sylv3r]

Thanks for that CyberN, were not really bothered about live updates were happy with the manual update.

 

But how do the other commerical VLE's do it?

 

Listening device on a server and some kind of software on the SIMS box that communicates with the remote serveR?

 

I think most just have a custom script to interrogate the SIMS database. TALMOS for one does this but it has to be done manually - its not live so to speak.

[maniac]

Not sure how other VLES do it or how it's done with SIMS, but as an example I've written an selection of PHP scripts that automatically sync moodle with CMIS, it has a simple user interface built in that allows you to add CMIS teaching groups to Courses created within moodle, and then using this information it allocates the correct kids to the various courses etc. It also notifys me when students that are in moodle don't exist anymore in CMIS (i.e have left the school) so we can disable their accounts on the network, and does the same for new starters, so we can create their account ahead of them starting (how efficient!)

 

It runs the main part of the program as a batch (or CRON) job every night, as part of this is checks all the group memberships against cmis and moves students around as necessary, it also e-mails me a detailed report. Its deadly accurate, I can see staright away what students have moved groups from the report, and I can trigger it manually if necessary e.g if there's a new starter that deperately needs to use moodle, and their account has only just been created.

 

I would imagine a VLE that links to SIMS would read the data in a simelar fashion, and use it in a simelar way and probably as a batch job as well as this is by far the easiest way of syncronising two systems. I know some systems will also feed assesment data back into the MIS, as well as use the MIS data for creation of accounts etc. Moodle uses LDAP here, their CMIS student number is added in AD when the accounts are created to tie it all together.

 

Mike.

Edited March 27, 2008 by maniac

[scottyses]

DanIT... I would be interested to know how you extract the staff and pupil timetables from SIMS. Any info would be much apprechiated!!!

[Oops_my_bad]

DanIT... I would be interested to know how you extract the staff and pupil timetables from SIMS. Any info would be much apprechiated!!!

 

Same here.. I thought this couldn't be done

[CyberNerd]

me too.

I'm going to start a wiki of some of the stuff thats working at my place before it all gets replaced with our (pants) LA offering.

 

SIMS and Moodle Integration - EduGeek.net Wiki

[stratisphere]

The buzz words at the moment as far as intergration goes with MIS's and VLE's (and anything else really) is SIF.

 

Well, around here it is anyway!

 

Basically the way it's supposed to work is, each app/system is SIF compliant. Then, there is a SIF agent which is responsible for translating the SIF framework back to (or from) what the application knows.

 

E.g.

Our vle is a system called Dokeos (really cool open-source VLE. Made by people from france. But fully translated... code is a little hard to follow at times tho).

So, it would work like this...

Dokeos -> SIF Agent -> SIMS.Net (Or other MIS)

and vice versa

SIMS.Net -< SIF Agent -< Dokeos

 

Communication is live and as the application itself does the processing then data doesnt get corrupted from editing the database direct (not too much of an issue with things like VLE's... but with SIMS you can really mess up the DB if you edit it directly).

 

As i'm aware, there are no open-source/free agents out there. And i suspect the SIF agent you would use for SIMS or any other MIS's would come with an extra cost.

 

But the SIF website is Welcome to the Schools Interoperability Framework Association and i'm slowly making my way through the framework specification and writting an agent to do some things with it. No idea on timescale tho.

[mylearningltd]

As a commercial VLE provider we have noticed that "integration" can mean different things.

There's the easy way and the way it should work.

 

Easy way - "Yes, we integrate with your MIS because we connect and read some data from it onto a screen"

 

Hard way - "Yes, we integrate and by that we mean that if your MIS admin changes/adds or edits a user or group on the MIS then our VLE will synchronise on request to update

the VLE to try and reflect the exact tree structure of your MIS. Yes, we will take into account that a user you just deleted from the MIS will need removed from the VLE and also

try to work out what to do if that person happened to own 3 courses, 6 learning spaces, sent 15 moderation requests and has uploaded 1200 files that 80% of the school are still using.

 

We will also do our best to work out what to do with a group on our VLE when you rename it on your MIS even though your MIS doesn't store any type of unique reference for groups similar to the UPN number for users. This means that if you rename a group on your MIS our VLE has no way of knowing what it use to be so as it only has the name of the group to rely on as a reference. It will assume it's deleted and a new group just got added."

 

Fortunately, we've tackled the hard way (using a wizard) and now, if anyone asks "Do you integrate with MIS" we can explain the difference between "Yes" the easy way and "Yes" the proper way.

At the moment, we've been saying "No" because to us, reading some data from a table onto a screen isn't integration in the sense we want it to mean.

 

All the best!

 

Adam

Edited March 30, 2012 by mylearningltd

[bantonia]

Hi,

 

I use a Java application I've written running via a cron job. Runs various SIMS reports remotely and gathers student, staff and class details. Staff, student and SIMS classes in Moodle are created/deleted as required via Moodle web services using REST protocols. Currently a separate database holds details of who is attached to which SIMS class/course and this is used for database enrollment. The SIMS classes/courses are then used as sources for meta enrollment for Moodle courses.

 

Here are links to the Java libraries I've created to do this, however I haven't as yet released the code for the sync routine. Works and it's free!

 

MoodleRest Java Library | Free software downloads at SourceForge.net

SIMS CommandReporter Java API | Free software downloads at SourceForge.net

 

Ignore the single not recommended on the second download, they obviously knew not what they were doing or were trying to divert attention, I've been running SIMS reports remotely for some time without problems.

[paulgarratt83]

The buzz words at the moment as far as intergration goes with MIS's and VLE's (and anything else really) is SIF.

 

Well, around here it is anyway!

 

Basically the way it's supposed to work is, each app/system is SIF compliant. Then, there is a SIF agent which is responsible for translating the SIF framework back to (or from) what the application knows.

 

E.g.

Our vle is a system called Dokeos (really cool open-source VLE. Made by people from france. But fully translated... code is a little hard to follow at times tho).

So, it would work like this...

Dokeos -> SIF Agent -> SIMS.Net (Or other MIS)

and vice versa

SIMS.Net -< SIF Agent -< Dokeos

 

Communication is live and as the application itself does the processing then data doesnt get corrupted from editing the database direct (not too much of an issue with things like VLE's... but with SIMS you can really mess up the DB if you edit it directly).

 

As i'm aware, there are no open-source/free agents out there. And i suspect the SIF agent you would use for SIMS or any other MIS's would come with an extra cost.

 

But the SIF website is Welcome to the Schools Interoperability Framework Association and i'm slowly making my way through the framework specification and writting an agent to do some things with it. No idea on timescale tho.

 

To stratisphere

 

I'm just wonering how far long you got with creating your own SIF agent. We are looking for SIMS.net - SIF - Moodle and am wanting to create my own SIF to access the SIMS.

 

Cheers

[stratisphere]

To stratisphere

 

I'm just wonering how far long you got with creating your own SIF agent. We are looking for SIMS.net - SIF - Moodle and am wanting to create my own SIF to access the SIMS.

 

Cheers

 

Oh man, as with all things "buzzy"... it's totally died off. I put loads of work/research in to doing a C# implementation of the SIF framework only to find that I could not find anything to link in to SIMS. I know Capita do some kind of developer kit but you have to pay a ridiculous fee for it... just to link in to a number of DLLs (There are of course other technical solutions/possibilities, but I could never endorse anything that does not follow various terms of use etc).

 

I havnt heard the SIF buzzword in aggesssss. Currently everything is one way from SIMS. I have various apps which sit on servers that run imported reports in sims (via the commandreporter.exe) and then transfered to the site for processing via HTTPS XMLRPC. Basically, read only. But without paying for developer access, I can only dream of writing to SIMS.

 

Interestingly enough, i'm currently working on an agent to link in to Moodle FROM sims (auto creating groups/enrolments etc). What are you looking to do?

[stratisphere]

Interestingly enough, I've just been looking back over the SIF specifications for the UK and the last it was updated was Nov 2011 so it still seems to be around. I wonder if we can extract any kind of response from Capita to if they are going to support it in SIMS.

[penfold_99]

Interestingly enough, I've just been looking back over the SIF specifications for the UK and the last it was updated was Nov 2011 so it still seems to be around. I wonder if we can extract any kind of response from Capita to if they are going to support it in SIMS.

 

Capita are involved with the SIF UK Technical Board and Partnership Exchange uses SIF to move data between consortia schools/academies and there are third party application that can SIF enable SIMS.net.

 

Is your agent to link Moodle and SIMS going to use SIF or interface with command reporter directly?

[stratisphere]

Capita are involved with the SIF UK Technical Board and Partnership Exchange uses SIF to move data between consortia schools/academies and there are third party application that can SIF enable SIMS.net.

 

Is your agent to link Moodle and SIMS going to use SIF or interface with command reporter directly?

 

Yeh I was aware of that but I'm not aware of anything Capita offers that actually uses SIF in SIMS? Although certainly wasnt aware of third party agents! I'll look in to them, assuming they don't charge a silly amount then that could be very useful!

 

As you'll know various versions have been around for yonks... yet annoyingly it doesn't seem to have taken off (not from my part of the forest in the front-line anyway). I love the idea of it and as a developer it makes a stupidly massive difference in just making "it" work. Communication between all common education systems is what I'm always striving to achieve... but there always has to be hacks to get things to talk (albeit it, one way most of the time) together.

 

I personally am using command reporter to drag the info out of SIMS in to various systems and apps as that's the only way I can do it without breaking any contracts/terms etc. However I've if the SIF agents for SIMS work out, then things will be changing pretty rapidly

 

paulgarratt83: If these agents are cheap enough for the integration I need, then I may very well be able to help out!

[paulgarratt83]

Yeh I was aware of that but I'm not aware of anything Capita offers that actually uses SIF in SIMS? Although certainly wasnt aware of third party agents! I'll look in to them, assuming they don't charge a silly amount then that could be very useful!

 

As you'll know various versions have been around for yonks... yet annoyingly it doesn't seem to have taken off (not from my part of the forest in the front-line anyway). I love the idea of it and as a developer it makes a stupidly massive difference in just making "it" work. Communication between all common education systems is what I'm always striving to achieve... but there always has to be hacks to get things to talk (albeit it, one way most of the time) together.

 

I personally am using command reporter to drag the info out of SIMS in to various systems and apps as that's the only way I can do it without breaking any contracts/terms etc. However I've if the SIF agents for SIMS work out, then things will be changing pretty rapidly

 

paulgarratt83: If these agents are cheap enough for the integration I need, then I may very well be able to help out!

 

There are a few commerical tools that estract data from SIMS using SIF, ZiLink and a few others. Also I know there are a few bespoke products that use a bit of the SIF to get the data but have custom code to do other things.

 

I have found these products to be rather over priced for what I am after. Our Primary schools would not be able to afford the circa 1k a year for the product and I don't think they can justify it. We also have a central SIMS learning Gateway setup here and the price to primaries for this is cheap (for Capita).

 

I was hoping to either create my own or buy in an agent to develop.

 

I'm not sure where to start with a SIF agent so any help would be great.

 

Cheers

[paulgarratt83]

Oh man, as with all things "buzzy"... it's totally died off. I put loads of work/research in to doing a C# implementation of the SIF framework only to find that I could not find anything to link in to SIMS. I know Capita do some kind of developer kit but you have to pay a ridiculous fee for it... just to link in to a number of DLLs (There are of course other technical solutions/possibilities, but I could never endorse anything that does not follow various terms of use etc).

 

I havnt heard the SIF buzzword in aggesssss. Currently everything is one way from SIMS. I have various apps which sit on servers that run imported reports in sims (via the commandreporter.exe) and then transfered to the site for processing via HTTPS XMLRPC. Basically, read only. But without paying for developer access, I can only dream of writing to SIMS.

 

Interestingly enough, i'm currently working on an agent to link in to Moodle FROM sims (auto creating groups/enrolments etc). What are you looking to do?

 

'Moodle FROM sims (auto creating groups/enrolments etc).'

 

I'm after something like this and then maybe see what else I can get out of SIMS.

[stratisphere]

'Moodle FROM sims (auto creating groups/enrolments etc).'

 

I'm after something like this and then maybe see what else I can get out of SIMS.

 

Ahh, that's currently what we do with ours... although it's a bit of a messy approach. Currently we do ours like:

 

Qualification/Subject/Class memberships go this way (all our students have their admission number stored in their user accounts in active directory)

SIMS -> MyAwesomeSpecialDecoderApp -> Active Directory

This ends in each qualification/subject/class having it's own group in AD with the members as appropriate.

 

The app then auto creates the courses in moodle to match qualifications. It then enrolls the students that apply.

As a last step, it also creates the class groups in each course so staff can assign things by group if they wish.

 

This is all very well but we've found it's not very flexible. For example, some teachers are wanting to create their own courses (I.e. Y7 ICT Homework). So we're currently looking at another method by using meta courses and cohort syncing. This will basically allow us to define the cohorts available (Subjects, qualifications and classes) and then when you create a new course (be it manually or automatically) you can assign which ever cohort you choose.

 

I'm currently working on the app which will sync all that. Ours will be doing it via AD too, but it's trivial to make it direct to Moodle. It should also involve a moodle side plugin to allow XMLRPC rather than having direct access to the DB to the server your running the syncing app from should only need https access to the moodle server.

[bantonia]

We do something similar but does not require links to AD apart from authentication.

I've created a Java app which is run via cron on Linux which accesses the SIMS CommandReporter tool by RMI. This extracts the required data for Staff, Students and Classes by running SIMS reports and creates an intermediate MySQL database. Any new users and classes are created in Moodle via web services. The final part is to use database enrollment into the classes created from SIMS. These classes are not used directly but are used to populate courses with meta links to the SIMS classes within Moodle. One thing which is also needed is the usernames of students and staff added to SIMS in a UDF.

 

I am going to change the access into SIMS a bit by moving the extraction of the data via CommandReporter, instead of using RMI I'm going to use web services on a GlassFish install on the SIMS server. It still extracts the data via reports but the server part is less likely to be shut down than that currently in use by RMI.

The web service creates WSDL file so can be used by other languages instead of being tied to Java. So if you want to code in C# you can still extract the data from SIMS via web services.

The web service software can be downloaded from http://www.beaconhillcott.net, it is in the "dist" sub-directory of the zipped NetBeans project.

Edited April 19, 2012 by bantonia