Need SIMS - AD Create Module

[Grommit]

I am looking for a prohram that lets us export new users from SIMS and Creates Accounts in AD and visa versa when they leave their account is disablled..

 

ANy Ideas ?

[penfold_99]

I am looking for a prohram that lets us export new users from SIMS and Creates Accounts in AD and visa versa when they leave their account is disablled..

 

ANy Ideas ?

 

Hi,

 

Do you use moodle?

 

I will be finished my moodle block that handles this in the coming weeks.

[BatchFile]

I am looking for a prohram that lets us export new users from SIMS and Creates Accounts in AD and visa versa when they leave their account is disablled..

 

ANy Ideas ?

 

You can almost certainly do this from a batch file using DsMod, DsAdd, a "for" loop and some carefully crafted Sims .Net reports that output as CSVs...

[matt40k]

Salamander Active Directory

SalamanderSoft Limited - Salamander Active Directory

 

Capita SQL partner (both read\write)

[dhicks]

You can almost certainly do this from a batch file using DsMod, DsAdd, a "for" loop and some carefully crafted Sims .Net reports that output as CSVs...

 

I've got a script that does this - extracts data via a SIMS report (XML passed over HTTP rather than fiddling around with CSV files) and uses DsAdd to add users to Active Directory. It's currently broken while I convert it from Perl to Python, give us a couple of weeks and it should be sorted.

 

--

David Hicks

[matt40k]

I've got a script that does this - extracts data via a SIMS report (XML passed over HTTP rather than fiddling around with CSV files)

 

Tasty

 

while I convert it from Perl to Python, give us a couple of weeks and it should be sorted.

 

Agggh.... What's wrong with C# or such?

[dhicks]

What's wrong with C# or such?

 

Nothing, the utility is written as a pair of programs, one providing a Windows Service that acts as an HTTP server that simply passes report names and parameters on to CommandReporter.exe, the other as a library API that facilitates getting XML data via HTTP and processing it. Other people are more than welcome to write their own libraries in other languages to replace my API, and I only wrote the HTTP server in Python because that was the simplest, easiest thing I had to hand.

 

--

David Hicks

[penfold_99]

Nothing, the utility is written as a pair of programs, one providing a Windows Service that acts as an HTTP server that simply passes report names and parameters on to CommandReporter.exe, the other as a library API that facilitates getting XML data via HTTP and processing it. Other people are more than welcome to write their own libraries in other languages to replace my API, and I only wrote the HTTP server in Python because that was the simplest, easiest thing I had to hand.

 

--

David Hicks

 

Hi David,

 

What is you speed like with using a web service around commandreport.exe. Is there any caching invloved? as some reports can take a while.

 

I went with csv as it's less fiddly than a direct DB connection (but does remove some of the possible features) and there wasn't any speed issues.

[dhicks]

What is you speed like with using a web service around commandreport.exe. Is there any caching invloved?

 

The speed is simply however long it takes commandreporter to run. HTTP itself doesn't have any timeout - your browser or web server normally handle timeouts, but my small Python web server will cheerfully sit there and wait for SIMS to take however long it wants. This, coupled with the fact that the web server is only single-threaded (i.e. it starts one request, waits until it's done, then does the next) does potentially mean that if commandreporter conks out then the web service will get stuck, but there's no reason I've seen to expect that to happen.

 

Any caching I intended to happen client-side, i.e. it's up to the library / API to cache anything it wants. Theoretically, performance is also affected by encrypting / decrypting xhunks of XML at each end and using HTTP as a transport layer, but this isn't really intended to run anything a user will be directly using, it's for automated scripts that run once an hour or whatever, performance isn't really much of an issue.

 

I went with csv

 

The XML that comes out of commandreporter seems to be impressivly comprehensive, complete with schema embedded at the head of every document and everything, so I thought it a shame to waste it :-)

 

We should probably, at some point soon, get together and discuss what we're doing and maybe try and coordinate our efforts a bit. It seems that you're rather further along than I am, so I should probably try and conform any API that I write (in Python) to whatever you're already got written. I'm attending the Open Source Schools un-conference in Nottingham next month where we'll be discussing this stuff, it'd be handy to know what you've done before then. Is there a code repository somewhere that you're using (CVS or whatever) - if not, do you reckon it's worth starting a SourceForge project or similar so we have somewhere to put stuff as we work on it?

 

--

David Hicks

[penfold_99]

@dhicks

 

I will be at unconference also. (that reminds me i need to register a place)

 

I'm in the proccess of turning my integration bits in to a commercial offering while still being open source.

The idea is a co-op membership subscription, everyone pays the same low price (compared to other offerings, ie hundreds not thousands).

 

The goal here is to sustain the development time with the lead of to 2010 and meeting the becta requirements.

[dhicks]

I will be at unconference also.

 

Ah ha, I'll see you there, then! Do you think we need to propose another session? I don't want to hijack the ScholarPack one, although I think the work we're doing is relevant to ScholarPack - no reason why anything we write can't work with ScholarPack or other tools as well as SIMS, we just need to agree on some kind of common API or data exchange format. We would basically be writing a bunch of plugins around a core MIS system, with the idea that we could (maybe) eventually swap out the core MIS for a different one.

 

--

David Hicks