PhilNeal

To return to the question of the first load of a web part being slower than subsequent ones; I have been talking to the people that understand these details. The very first time that a web part is used it will require the page to be built on the server; subsequent views will use a cashed version. If it is the first call on the SQL database that will also take longer.

Cost of training = 1/2hr!! Do it - you know it makes sense! Agree completely about the whiteboard, its fantastic to see.

We use transient connections to the database which means you can't work out who is connected. I think we are changing this with SM7.

Have you thought about taking the register on a PC? It saves a huge amount of time and is getting very popular in primary schools.

I'm not sure so will have to ask.

Not sure about being in denial! There are three issues running in this thread I think. Firstly the problem we had with Capita hosted SLG which was freezing in some schools - I'm told that this has been resolved. Second, the first call to a web part is 10-15 secs but subsequent calls are fast. SQL does need to be woken up after it has dropped things from memory. Third, it is possible for speed issues to occur if the wireless network in the school is overloaded. Is there something that I'm missing?

Sorry been out of the office - yes it only applied to Capita hosted. Hopefully it has been OK for you today otherwise please log a call so we can help.

We did have some reports of problems from a few schools today. The problem has been traced to loadbalancing and the team is working tonight to resolve this issue The fix will be applied tomorrow. The problem is unlikely to affect LA hosted schools.

Assuming that everything goes to plan we should be able to support Windows 7 from the October release. We've tested SIMS and there are very few issue. FMS relies on some function calls that MS have not ported to Windows 7. We are writing and testing subsitute functions.

... contribution deleted as an expert gave a better answer!

I can confirm that you can't delete rooms that have been used within a timetable and that is to protect historical information. The DPA reference is probably to do with preserving history so that you can look back at the data. There are some potential legal issues; the room is linked to where children are and have been. If you deleted the room that intersection would become invalid. You can delete a room that hasn't been used; this is to allow you to correct mistakes at set-up. There is a flag to indicate that the room is no longer in use and that applies in Cover. I suspect that there is a not used flag in Nova but am not sure.

I don't think that DPA is the reason for this - I'd appreciate you emailing me the case number so I can follow it up.

Please log a call if you haven't done so already. I would expect a fast turnaround.

If your school sits all sorts of alternative exams they won't be included in the standard tables for the calculation of the league table points value. The change allows you to add values for these exams so that you can calculate a more accurate points value.

Sorry I was far too cryptic. We wouldn’t poll for changes that frequently as we’d be worried about overloading the servers. PX polls every 2 minutes or so which is fine for many uses but it isn’t real-time. I’m concerned that some people think they can drive a parental web site using SIF. As SIF is asynchronous performance cannot be guaranteed and screens could take 4 minutes to display. You then have to keep a duplicate data store which is refreshed periodically.

Not so!

It's Friday and I've had a drink or two so it's probably unwsie for me to continue but what the heck! Why should we devote time and energy to get compatible with an operating system that isn't released? All the reports on W7 are good, its something we will support but will it save a child? Will it improve a school's results? Will it make our software easier to use? etc. No! The pre-releases had missing functions that we will need to emulate if they are not in the final release. We intend to be W7 compatible by October 09. (We never developed for the BBC )

To be fair that's my (Capita's) statement - as most RM schools are primary its unlikely that they have too many techs working in the summer holidays. According to the DCSF (England) they had 2014 returns from RM in Jan 09 - 1938 were nursery/primary/special. Serco had 1387 of which 851 were nursery/primary/special.

We have around 80% of schools in England, Wales and NI. The next is RM which has a significant share of primary schools. Serco is next followed by Pearson. If you ask DCSF they wll let you have the census return numbers.

I don't think that Extended Services will help you with this but PX does have a web part to allow external providers to take registers.

Ian, SIF deals with single ownership of data well. The problem comes when two parties own a data item and the best example is addresses which are managed by schools and LAs. SIF doesn't provide for a dialogue between the two parties. If one party rejects a change the originating party isn't automatcially informed and the rejection sits on the ZIS waiting for manual intervention. We know from our own experiences with B2B Student that there are hundreds of rejected messages that need to be processed every month. Knowing where a child is living is vital for social services. Penfold the LA has every right to see the pupil data. The problem I'm referring to is within consortia. You want to share John Smith's data with Barnfield and Shirelands but none of the other schools in the consortia. We have raised our concerns with SIFA but haven't seen a solution emerge. You'd need to ask Becta what their view is.

I'm afraid that the situation gets worse as you move towards school/LA data sharing. SIF doesn't provide for a "dialogue" between data owners that could result in children being lost. This could place a child at extreme risk. Data can only be shared between institutions that have a valid interest in a pupil. We are working with Becta and SIFA to get these issues addressed. Rob is one of the few people in SIFA to recognise the issues we have raised as real. Implementing a system that we believe would be insecure would create a huge reputational risk for Capita - imagine the headlines. "Capita implements a data exchange system that it knew was insecure". If these issues are acknowledged we can find a solution that is standard and proper plans can be made to roll it out.

We have been very open about our security concerns which Rob has acknowledged to be real. Rob's solution is to build security into the ZIS. I don't think this is something that other ZIS manufacturers have done? Our solution was to add a tag to the messages. We had a real problem to solve two years ago. We tried using straight SIF messages but the schools did not want to share pupil records with schools that didn't teach their pupils. If we had waited for our changes to be ratified our schools still wouldn't have a solution.

Why don't you do a freedom of information request of DCSF to find out what Norfolk secondary schools are using to produce their census data!

Partnership XChange would pass a SIF test (if there was one). However we have, as is permitted under SIF, included some extra tags that make it possible for schools to decide who they share data with. Plain SIF does not deal with many many issues - like a school granting permission for another school to see a data record. Imagine SIF broadcasting your bank account details to anyone that is listening. We have been commissioned to produce a SIF agent that can be used to provision AD entries by another piece of software. If you look on the SIFA site they detail how much SIF will cost schools and LAs ££££££££££££. Until the issue of funding is cleared I can't see SIF being adopted by LAs.