duplicating a vle, mis, sif agent environment

[muser]

Hi, I've been reading that an SIF agent is required to link user data extracted from a schools MIS and Active Directory into Moodle. Does anybody know if this setup be duplicated so you have two instances, with one being a live server and another testing server environment or are there some settings that prevent this duplication?

 

Thanks in advance

[penfold_99]

Hi, I've been reading that an SIF agent is required to link user data extracted from a schools MIS and Active Directory into Moodle. Does anybody know if this setup be duplicated so you have two instances, with one being a live server and another testing server environment or are there some settings that prevent this duplication?

 

Thanks in advance

 

Which SIF based solution have you been looking in to?

[muser]

Which SIF based solution have you been looking in to?

 

Hi, I believe it is the groupcall exporter sif agent.

[penfold_99]

Hi, I believe it is the groupcall exporter sif agent.

 

GroupCall Xporter SIF will get you data from SIMS.net/Facility CMIS in SIF format but won't put it into moodle, you would also need ZiLink for Moodle which will take the data and can push it into a development and a live moodle. ZiLink for Moodle also include the GroupCall Xporter SIF and a Zone on a ZIS that handles the communication between the two.

 

(for clarity we are the authors of ZiLink for Moodle and AFAIK the only provider of SIF based Moodle Integration, if there were others I would have covered them in this post)

[muser]

GroupCall Xporter SIF will get you data from SIMS.net/Facility CMIS in SIF format but won't put it into moodle, you would also need ZiLink for Moodle which will take the data and can push it into a development and a live moodle. ZiLink for Moodle also include the GroupCall Xporter SIF and a Zone on a ZIS that handles the communication between the two.

 

(for clarity we are the authors of ZiLink for Moodle and AFAIK the only provider of SIF based Moodle Integration, if there were others I would have covered them in this post)

 

Thank you for this information, according to groupcall they only give mention to SIF Groupcall reaches 1000 SIF Agent sales in the UK but nothing about ZIS although I have come across the term apart from this site Open Source Solutions for the Schools Interoperability Framework as well as http://www.sifsupport.com/wordpress/other-sif-related-articles/moodle-sif-agent/.

 

Are you saying that the SIF agent just handles pure data in terms of extraction from CMIS / SIMS.net but works alongside some other software to work with a VLE i.e. zilink?

 

For clarity is zilink some software that is installed on the end users server, does this contain the configuration details of the server and VLE? You refer to this pushing data into Moodle?

 

Thanks

[penfold_99]

Thank you for this information, according to groupcall they only give mention to SIF Groupcall reaches 1000 SIF Agent sales in the UK but nothing about ZIS although I have come across the term apart from this site Open Source Solutions for the Schools Interoperability Framework as well as http://www.sifsupport.com/wordpress/other-sif-related-articles/moodle-sif-agent/.

 

Are you saying that the SIF agent just handles pure data in terms of extraction from CMIS / SIMS.net but works alongside some other software to work with a VLE i.e. zilink?

 

For clarity is zilink some software that is installed on the end users server, does this contain the configuration details of the server and VLE? You refer to this pushing data into Moodle?

 

Thanks

 

A providing SIF agent (GroupCall) will only make data avaliable in the SIF open standard. A SIF agent (ZILink) will then subscribe to this information via a Zone Integration Server (ZIS).

 

ZiLink is in two parts, one part is a set of plugins that are installed in to moodle and the second is a hosted sif infrastructure that connects to the plugins via moodle standard web services and pushes data retrieved from your mis via sif, all the data transferred is secured with SSL certificates.

 

I can give a more detailed explanation of how SIF works if you would like? If you just pm some contact details.

[muser]

A providing SIF agent (GroupCall) will only make data avaliable in the SIF open standard. A SIF agent (ZILink) will then subscribe to this information via a Zone Integration Server (ZIS).

 

ZiLink is in two parts, one part is a set of plugins that are installed in to moodle and the second is a hosted sif infrastructure that connects to the plugins via moodle standard web services and pushes data retrieved from your mis via sif, all the data transferred is secured with SSL certificates.

 

I can give a more detailed explanation of how SIF works if you would like? If you just pm some contact details.

 

Hi, yes feel free to directly pm me

 

From what I can understand based on your reply the sif agent is a piece of software that is capable of reading data from the MIS in its own format, it appears that groupcall's sif is a common popular agent?

 

You mention zilink, is this another piece of software which is then able to read the information extracted by the sif agent and communicate with a vle (insert the extracted data)? I have heard the term blocks being used for Moodle, is this what you mean by a set of plugins?

 

Can all of this be hosted locally and where is all the data actually stored please as you refer to data pushing.

 

Thanks