DBMan Posted May 21, 2009 Posted May 21, 2009 Hi all, I've been looking at enhancing the performance reporting available from SIMS on behalf of a local school. After reading a lot of posts on this (most excellent) forum, I think I have gleaned the following: - SIMS has Business Objects capability - existing reporting capability is hard to use - no direct access to the SQL Server database is allowed, including read only (!) - existing tools must be used to export data from SIMS So, it appears that if schools are unhappy with the existing SIMS reporting capability they either have to master Business Objects, pay for Business Objects consultancy (ouch), or use another tool that feeds off SIMS data. Am I right so far???
soofire Posted May 21, 2009 Posted May 21, 2009 More or less yes. In our school reporting in SIMS is a nightmare and really not all user friendly.
MattMitchell Posted May 21, 2009 Posted May 21, 2009 - SIMS has Business Objects capability - existing reporting capability is hard to use - no direct access to the SQL Server database is allowed, including read only (!) - existing tools must be used to export data from SIMS ... master Business Objects, pay for Business Objects consultancy (ouch) Close, but "business objects" in SIMS terms is not the SAP Business Objects that can swallow the GDP of a small developing nation. It's a COM-based api to SIMS that allows access to the data. It's free to licence holders for read-only use, or to other people (e.g. third-party developers) for (I think) about £5K. It is possible to write back using the API, but obviously this brings with it support charges and the potential risk of having to pay Capita to fix the data if something goes wrong. To use the API you have to get Capita to licence you first - the free use setup is dependent on the licence holder agreeing (for support implications). Apparently the documentation on it is slim to none in this scenario, although I'm hoping to see some myself soon so I'll let you know then! It sounds like you are wanting to do the kind of stuff I'm going to be implementing over the next couple of months where I am! I'm new to SIMS (and education) but not to databases and development. On the plus side, the reports can do some stuff - I've not found a way to do full cross-tab queries yet, but I have seen it do something close to it. The reporting isn't amazing, but it can do a few things that will be helpful to you. Mostly it's oriented around outputting rows from one of the main tables (students, staff, grades) and letting you select which fields you want, but it's not quite as limited as all that. As far as the difficulty factor goes, mostly this comes down to learning how it works and describes things. Most schools aren't very expert in using the package, and it sounds like most people using it here are coming from a network manager direction rather than a developer direction, so you may find it easier than you think. If the worst comes to the absolute worst, it will output data into an excel template, which would allow you to build the analysis in at that point, with appropriate OnOpen event handlers to tidy/rearrange it first. I'm trying to avoid the excel route mostly, as my remit involves creating live report data for people to use without needing to know how to produce it.
MattMitchell Posted May 21, 2009 Posted May 21, 2009 Oh, and IMHO the general interface to SIMS sucks! There's not a lot of customisation available, and although there are "Categories" (a bit like tags to aid people in selecting reports/fieldnames/whatever from a list) most of the time, users have to select a choice from a long single list of items.
Sivadam Posted May 21, 2009 Posted May 21, 2009 Reporting in SIMS is actually very, very good. You just need plenty of training, practice and experience.
kxv2020 Posted May 21, 2009 Posted May 21, 2009 Reporting in SIMS is actually very, very good. You just need plenty of training, practice and experience. I agree -- You can do quite complex things with in built outputs to rtf, excel; you need time to fiddle and play with it so you get what you want.
Sivadam Posted May 21, 2009 Posted May 21, 2009 Good for you kiran! I have been reading these forums for quite a while before I started subscribing. There always seems to be a very negative attitude to SIMS by many subscribers. It is about time that those who know that SIMS is an excellent system started refuting some of the adverse comments that regularly appear.
MattMitchell Posted May 22, 2009 Posted May 22, 2009 OK, I'll rephrase myself. The reporting and ouputting of data IS good, it has a good interface and allows setting up reports with year group / subject group / whatever selection by users at runtime. What is a little more lacking (as far as I've seen so far) is the analysis side of things. As soon as row and column headings become field values rather than field names, it seems not have all the features one might want then.
Hecate Posted May 22, 2009 Posted May 22, 2009 Try and get hold of an advanced reporting training manual. This will give you a good idea of some of the things that are achievable in SIMS reporting before you start designing your own system. It is possible to set up quite complex templates which are populated from the database at runtime. If you want to do analysis of exams results etc look at AMPARK first
PhilNeal Posted May 22, 2009 Posted May 22, 2009 MattMichell - take a look at PA (Performance Analysis) which is an extremely poweful tool. Data experts tend to feel at home with PA; I personally I think it could be a little more intuitive! You certainly shouldn't have to take data out of SIMS to turn your school into an out performer.
MattMitchell Posted May 23, 2009 Posted May 23, 2009 AMPARK might be the way then! Certainly I've seen some very good things being done with SIMS at Serlby Park (there's a good interview with their data manager online). I'm probably being a little unfair as I haven't been through any formal training yet on what SIMS can do; it's just the frequent responses of "you can do all that with it in excel" tend to give me a bad impression! I'm still going to push at the LA for the business objects link as well, if only for certain other things we're likely to be doing in the medium term. PhilNeal - one feature I do really like about SIMS is the way related records are linked; for example, viewing a student's records brings up links to related assessment, behaviour, etc. Similarly the ability to drill down into summaries (at least I've seen this on the multifunction panels) and view the lists of students in a particular grouping is very good, and allows teaching staff and leadership teams to identify key students. I've not seen it link right through to the actual student focus though - can this be done from the panels (or ideally from analysis reports!), or is it a planned future improvement?
PhilNeal Posted May 28, 2009 Posted May 28, 2009 Matt, sorry I forgot about your question. PA in itself only drills to the pupil names however you can create PA template and attach it to a home page panel which does allow a drill to the pupil/teacher view. The advantage of creating a template for staff and attaching it to the home page is that it avoids them having to come to grips with PA. Although PA is very very powerful and data experts love it, its a little hard to get to grips with to start off with. 1
MattMitchell Posted May 28, 2009 Posted May 28, 2009 Attaching a template to the homepage is pretty much the approach I'm after - it fits well with the "make reports available without effort" model we're going to! And thanks for the answer - I quite like the free support you offer in here! ;-) (We do have a support contract, don't worry...)
PhilNeal Posted May 28, 2009 Posted May 28, 2009 Thanks Matt - If you want answers to in depth SIMS questions try SupportNet. It is free and there is a large community that is keen to help. They know far more than I do!!
Sivadam Posted May 28, 2009 Posted May 28, 2009 Flattery will get you everywhere, Phil! Matt is on SupportNet now so I am sure he will pick a few brains! And Matt - yep, get on those courses.
DBMan Posted June 19, 2009 Author Posted June 19, 2009 Hi Matt (and others), my sources advise that the BO inside SIMS is in fact the real deal BO engine white-labelled. The chap making this assertion is ex-BO, works as a freelance BO consultant and has worked on BO within SIMS. I am in no position to argue with him, although he could be wrong, of course ;-)
penfold_99 Posted June 19, 2009 Posted June 19, 2009 Hi Matt (and others), my sources advise that the BO inside SIMS is in fact the real deal BO engine white-labelled. The chap making this assertion is ex-BO, works as a freelance BO consultant and has worked on BO within SIMS. I am in no position to argue with him, although he could be wrong, of course ;-) Have you got any links to the website for the "real deal BO engine"?
DBMan Posted June 19, 2009 Author Posted June 19, 2009 Is this what you mean: SAP - SAP BusinessObjects Portfolio: Connecting People, Information, and Businesses If so, I'm not sure if it will help. BO is famously complex.
David_Grashoff Posted June 20, 2009 Posted June 20, 2009 Hi Matt (and others), my sources advise that the BO inside SIMS is in fact the real deal BO engine white-labelled. The chap making this assertion is ex-BO, works as a freelance BO consultant and has worked on BO within SIMS. I am in no position to argue with him, although he could be wrong, of course ;-) Hi DBMan - your source is mistaken. The BOs in SIMS are written by Capita originally in COM and latterly in .net. I am sure Penfold and any SIMS partners will verify this.
dhicks Posted June 21, 2009 Posted June 21, 2009 The reporting and ouputting of data IS good, it has a good interface and allows setting up reports with year group / subject group / whatever selection by users at runtime. Agreed. I've just been revisiting the code for charting exam results that I wrote last year. Data exported from SIMS via the CommandReporter tool comes out as XML, which whilst rather verbose certainly does look comprehensive. I (eventually) figured out how to do an HTTP server as a proper Windows service in Python and got it to return data from running CommandReporter, passing in variables if necessary and returning the XML data in encrypted form for security. I could never get any of the charting libraries in Python to do exactly what we wanted and spent most of my time last year finding that functionality was missing and working around it, so instead I'm simply going to create charts from scratch as bitmap images and be done with it. Hopefully in a couple of days I should have a tool to take exam result data and spew out a bunch of nice charts, both as HTML pages and as PDFs ready for printing. -- David Hicks
rpwillis Posted June 22, 2009 Posted June 22, 2009 Hi David, Have you looked at the Google Charting API. I've just been using it and it seems pretty comprehensive. http://blog.salamandersoft.co.uk/index.php/2009/06/google-chart-api/ I can also confirm for David that the Sims Business Objects are custom objects for Sims and not built on the SAP Business Objects. Bit of a shame that a generic computer science term is used as the name of a product/company as that just leads to confusion. Richard
dhicks Posted June 22, 2009 Posted June 22, 2009 Have you looked at the Google Charting API. I have, thanks. It still doesn't produce exactly what we want, though. Our problem is mostly to do with people expecting charts that look exactly like Excel ones but not being capable of creating them themselves, which makes for rather a lot of fiddling around bludgeoning existing chart libraries to fit how we want them to look. Easier and faster to simply make our own from scratch. I'd also prefer our code to sit on our machines rather than at the other end of an Internet connection for now. -- David Hicks
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