OPEN COMPETITION - Reward £1,000 by Bromcom

[Bromcom-PR]

OPEN COMPETITION

 

Reward £1,000 by Bromcom

 

We have been working through SIMS Report Generator facility, attempting to validate this extract method for schools choosing to migrate away from SIMS, and we have discovered further significant gaps in the data export, which will have a detrimental effect on the schools.

Anyone solving the following will be rewarded £1,000 for benefiting all schools in UK desperate to get their data where their database are locked away in ESS hosted SIMS databases:

 

• The reporting engine is not able to export the SIMS ‘lookup’ tables - These are the tables of referenceable data or settings that are used across the MIS. One example of this could be a list of behaviour event types including their associated unique codes/IDs and descriptions. What we can generate is a list of behaviour events that have occurred within a period and try to extrapolate a list from that, but it’s not going to give us anything that hasn’t been used yet, or tell us when the school has deactivated them and so on. The only way schools can export these is via a ‘Print’ button from the SIMS interface. This can create a PDF containing a table but there’s no way of automating this.
  

 

• Certain fields not available in the reporting engine – As we are creating the reports based on how we want the data to be formatted rather than how we can extract it, there are times where it’s not possible to fulfil the scope. For example, in a lot of cases, we can only export the description field for something ratherthan the code name. For example, in a list of behaviour events for a student, we would be able to say ‘Bullying – Online’ but not the code of the event which might be something like ‘BUL-ONL’. This would create significantly more work for our development team, and sometimes means that it’s not possible to import at all, or would create potential import issues in specific situations.
  

 

• Legacy Module data is virtually non-existent – Where the Secondary data relies upon decades old legacy modules, the reporting engine generally only has limited access to report on the information. Exams and Timetabling are a good example of this. Although some information is available such as exam results, it’s not in the format required by our current import process.
   
  Private Eye: mis-selling in MIS market …
  https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ali-guryel-18892715_private-eye-school-mis-school-software-activity-7209279735497900032-IhdQ?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_ios
  
   
  
  

Edited July 2, 2024 by Bromcom-PR

[Steve21]

• Certain fields not available in the reporting engine – As we are creating the reports based on how we want the data to be formatted rather than how we can extract it, there are times where it’s not possible to fulfil the scope. For example, in a lot of cases, we can only export the description field for something ratherthan the code name. For example, in a list of behaviour events for a student, we would be able to say ‘Bullying – Online’ but not the code of the event which might be something like ‘BUL-ONL’. This would create significantly more work for our development team, and sometimes means that it’s not possible to import at all, or would create potential import issues in specific situations.
  

 

Ones that like should just be the case of building the report the "right" way around. For example, doing it via student roles rather than via behaviour gives more access to info including Type and TypeCode:

 

 

Steve

[vikpaw]

But if the focus is student, won't the resultset be limited to items that are associated to a student, so an obscure unused type may be missed?

You might have to build a fake student, and give them one of each possible type of data, every behaviour, achievement, detention, medical condition, vaccination.....

 

Or, you could use the de facto industry standard method of interrogating the SQL database.

IIRC there is one mammoth table that lists hundreds of the lookup types.

[Steve21]

But if the focus is student, won't the resultset be limited to items that are associated to a student, so an obscure unused type may be missed?

You might have to build a fake student, and give them one of each possible type of data, every behaviour, achievement, detention, medical condition, vaccination.....

 

Or, you could use the de facto industry standard method of interrogating the SQL database.

IIRC there is one mammoth table that lists hundreds of the lookup types.

 

Yep but that was the 2nd request Student data

 

The first one was lookups, which as it's hosted SIMs they wouldn't have SQL access

 

Steve

[Michael]

Surely this should be bounced back to the competition commission and/or the DfE as the bottom line is it's school data and anything within the DB should be readable/extractable.

[pete]

£1000?

 

You can make a better offer than that.

[Bromcom-PR]

£1000?

You can make a better offer than that.

 

OK, name the price and please make a case for it. Please see below for context.

 

Why £1,000?

A team with total of 100+ man years of SIMS support experience couldn’t come up with a solution. Hence did not think more money will mean better chance to solve it. Hence coming up with a token figure of £1,000.

 

Objective:

To allow schools to get their data locked away in ESS remote servers and desperate to get them out! So this is a fight for all schools and for open systems.

 

Deja vu - history lesson time!

This is a replay of 20+ years ago of similar shenanigans, when technology moved from DOS to Windows.

 

Bromcom fought for open systems spending £200k in 2003 so to allow access to schools data by 3rd party applications. Whether for fair competition or fair procurement Bromcom always fought for schools and better education for children.

 

Here is the 2003 story: https://amp.theguardian.com/education/2003/may/09/schools.uk

Edited July 3, 2024 by Bromcom-PR

[FN-GM]

Why £1,000?

A team with total of 100+ man years of SIMS support experience couldn’t come up with a solution. Hence did not think more money will mean better chance to solve it. Hence coming up with a token figure of £1,000.

 

£1,000 is not a lot of money for this work. If you got a consultant in to solve this it would cost more. There are people on here who do consultancy work and they may not put the effort in.

 

When I was in the UK I charged more than this rate, for easy work I knew I could do.

Edited July 4, 2024 by FN-GM

[Steve101]

Why £1,000?

A team with total of 100+ man years of SIMS support experience couldn’t come up with a solution. Hence did not think more money will mean better chance to solve it. Hence coming up with a token figure of £1,000.

 

Already spent tonnes of money not being able to solve a problem so thought you would try and tempt someone with a small token figure. If your team can't solve it then it will probably take some real work time for someone with the expert knowledge to figure it out for you, such a person might decide the token value is not worth the hassle.

 

Great little PR stunt you are pulling with no real expectations of finding a solution but using it to highlight a real problem, as it is just a PR stunt maybe you should put up £100,000. Your PR Stunt will gain some traction, picked up by news sources etc..

[gszech]

LOL £1000 - One off payment

 

Make it £1000 per school that will benefit with this solution.

[dhicks]

The reporting engine is not able to export the SIMS ‘lookup’ tables - These are the tables of referenceable data or settings that are used across the MIS. One example of this could be a list of behaviour event types including their associated unique codes/IDs and descriptions. What we can generate is a list of behaviour events that have occurred within a period and try to extrapolate a list from that, but it’s not going to give us anything that hasn’t been used yet, or tell us when the school has deactivated them and so on. The only way schools can export these is via a ‘Print’ button from the SIMS interface. This can create a PDF containing a table but there’s no way of automating this.

 

So a school needs to go to SIMS, hit "print" and generate a PDF in a particular section to export some data, then upload that PDF document to some interface that you provide for parsing? If your system encounters a behaviour code that is unrecognised from that list it needs to direct the user to go and re-do the print-export-upload process. Should, hopefully, only need updating occasionaly, and in the context of someone switching between systems it should, hopefully, only be a temporary thing?

[pete]

OK, name the price and please make a case for it.

 

Other people have covered most of the reasons, but let's break it down. Context is that in another life I worked external PR for Audi, Budweiser, KLM (yes, including the flamingo, squirrel and DVT incidents when the client should have STFU) Mercedes and Sophos. I do know something of promoting and managing clients who want to do stupid things in public.

 

 

Bromcom is not the scrappy underdog you're pretending to be for PR reasons. Both Arbor and Bromcom are slowly becoming the 800 pound gorillas in the room and SIMS is on a diet when it comes to ingesting customers.

 

£1000

 

First: £1000 is a very cheap PR stunt and a poorly judged one, at least for this audience.

If you're inhouse PR then I realise there's a limit to the amount of stupid ideas you can shoot down if management are really set on them. But if you're an external agency and it was the client's idea, manage your client better or at least jack up the fees upon contract review.

 

Second: Bug bounty programs from major companies attract rewards in the tens of thousands. Given how many SIMS schools you're taking over, anything that can reduce the faff will pay for itself in time saved and schools onboarded.

 

Third. Say someone solves this as an intellectual exercise? Wouldn't Arbor pay more than £1000, especially if they can copyright the process? Why risk low-balling it? Whether it costs you £1000 or £50K, you'll easily make the money back within a year.

 

Experience

 

"100 years of SIMS support experience" isn't the claim you think it is. It might be impressive to a reporter who doesn't know any better, but that's 5 people with 20 yrs each or 20 with 5yrs each. That's not much considering your current and predicted growth. Edugeek inhabitants alone have probably racked up several (if not tens of) thousand years of SIMS support just through necessity (SIMS is awful and SIMS support is also not great).

 

Experience costs money. At my rate, that's 10 hrs of my time for an ad-hoc client without a retainer. We'd barely have the NDA, contract, initial meeting and scoping documents done at that point.

 

A more reasonable price

 

Existing customer: How about free MIS fees for a year for the school/trust that solves it?

 

Non-customer: Start at £10K and then be prepared to negotiate depending on time to produce a viable tool.

Edited July 4, 2024 by pete

[Ditto]

Well, this hasn't gone well...

 

CMA have suggested analysis and review due this month. https://www.gov.uk/cma-cases/investigation-into-conduct-of-education-software-solutions-limited-51427#case-timetable. I trust Bromcom have highlighted this example to the CMA.

[dmj]

So a school needs to go to SIMS, hit "print" and generate a PDF in a particular section to export some data, then upload that PDF document to some interface that you provide for parsing? If your system encounters a behaviour code that is unrecognised from that list it needs to direct the user to go and re-do the print-export-upload process. Should, hopefully, only need updating occasionaly, and in the context of someone switching between systems it should, hopefully, only be a temporary thing?

 

Congrats. £1000 on it's way to you.

Sell it to ESS for £50,000 before they read this!

[Marci]

So a school needs to go to SIMS, hit "print" and generate a PDF in a particular section to export some data, then upload that PDF document to some interface that you provide for parsing? If your system encounters a behaviour code that is unrecognised from that list it needs to direct the user to go and re-do the print-export-upload process. Should, hopefully, only need updating occasionaly, and in the context of someone switching between systems it should, hopefully, only be a temporary thing?

 

PowerQuery can programmatically merge a folder of PDFs, scan thru and extract their tabular content, and convert into spreadsheet too... technique we use frequently.

[Rob_D]

Doesn't it somewhat depend on how readable the output PDF is. I wouldn't put it past SIMS to render it as a whole page image, making any sort of content capture more difficult.

[dhicks]

Congrats. £1000 on it's way to you.

 

Hmm - I reckon about £5,000 to build a stand-alone web application to implement the above (basically, a wizard-style upload page where a MIS administrator could upload a PDF document generated from SIMS for parsing, then making that data available from some kind of API endpoint for integration with Bromcom, secured via Google / Microsoft logins), along with monthly hosting / usage fees.

 

Doesn't it somewhat depend on how readable the output PDF is. I wouldn't put it past SIMS to render it as a whole page image

 

A PDF document is pretty much an image anyway - you don't get whole text strings in a PDF document, you get individual characters and their size / placement on the page. You wind up having to do OCR to extract data anyway, and there's libraries / services that will help sort that these days.

[matt40k]

Yo!

1/ how is SIMS still a thing? Like seriously, would have put money on even SIMS being in the cloud by now.

2/ yer, why can't SIMS do a patch that removes their "over 1.5 million lines of ESS program code and other valuable ESS IP”, prob half a day of effort, then yer, why wouldn’t they want to just throw over a db, lot less hassle for everyone.

 

 

3/ £1k - sounds like your reward is stuck in the DOS days

4/ They are saying to use the SIMS Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), so why wouldn’t you use that, surely you’ve already done this as a long term partner?

[dmj]

2) ESS are claiming, rightly or wrongly that the SQL that defines the database is their code.

 

4)The API sucks, and cannot extract certain data that schools need, which is what Bromcom are trying to point out in this PR exercise. ESS will probably be able to respond that the data is readily extractable using an open (ish) format (PDF).

[matt40k]

2/ Yes - that "code" will be functions, views and stored procedures, which they can easily just drop from the database THEN give the database with just the tables / data.

 

4) Bromcom are talking about the reporting engine, which has always historically missed bits. The API SIMS are talking about is basically their app, so it will have everything. SIMS describing it as "easy" would be funny.

[dmj]

2/ Yes - that "code" will be functions, views and stored procedures, which they can easily just drop from the database THEN give the database with just the tables / data.

 

Disagree. The database structure itself is defined in code (SQL) . IANAL but I think this is what ESS claim.

[matt40k]

Maybe dropping the indexes and foreign keys as well but they will have a hard time claiming the tables SQL is IP. Ultimately they have a responsibility to provide the data in a useable format, dumping out the tables into CSV for example so it's gonna back fire in them being awkward. It is weird SIMS are forcing the API as that's really exposing more IP to third parties, not that any company would want it at this point, it's so old. Equally not sure why they wouldn't want to give them a backup to the school, the licenses have always been perpetual so they have a license for it, but you wouldn't want to provide them free hosting for it.

 

The bit they COULD argue is IP, would be the stuff they predefined, so like default codes etc. Maybe change all the data types on the columns to nvarchar(max) if they are feel particularly evil

[PotNoodleTech]

So hang on a sec here - WONDE can literally pull any data it wants through the API (even without your permission) - yet when it's time to migrate all of a sudden that's a big issue?

 

Won't take much proving that ESS are anticompetitive.

[psydii]

Two thoughts,

 

I wonder if there has been a change to the API license terms, perhaps only impacting one or two (former?) ESS partners.

 

I've not looked into what Wonde and the 3rd parties that use it are able to do, but the structure of the SEN/HR records does seem to me to be little janky when run through a third party service. The ability to get the data into the third party has seemed... lacking... and the ability to sync data back, limited. Do they use the API or are they also only allowed to call through the reporter tool?

[DrCheese]

 

Bromcom is not the scrappy underdog you're pretending to be for PR reasons. Both Arbor and Bromcom are slowly becoming the 800 pound gorillas in the room and SIMS is on a diet when it comes to ingesting customers.

 

Yeah... my worry is that SIMS get completely exterminated (That sounds weird typing that!) & we end up with just two big players in the market who just end up becoming ESS but worse....