PhilNeal

HodgeHi - if you'd like to let me know where you are I can get this looked at.

I'm not sure should be helping you then! :twisted: However what I think you have done is run the appication directly. Run Launcher and it then can launch the product that you are trying to run.

I suspect that your ISP is blocking access to our site. You may need to ask them to place it on the list of acceptable sites.

I think you must be running very old software. Launcher runs our dbase software.

Sorry to take so long to respond - I had to ask someone. The behaviour recording isn't there in the December release of SLG; it will come but we don't have a date yet.

Sorry I missed another post from TeddyKGB. Viglen, Fronter, Talmos, RM and Learnwise all make use of IME links with SIMS. Far better than .csv.

We have 100 partners that interface with SIMS in one way or another. Deep integration is possible through our partner programme. We have to pay our staff and shareholders so there are modest charges if you want to write data back to SIMS - read access is royalty free. It is quite possible for a third party to write an application that links more closely to SIMS than Learnwise does.

This doesn't sound right at all. Please log a call.

Be prepared for a parental backlash!

In SIMS we have a people table. A person can have multiple roles so doctor and parent, or parent, emergency contact and student etc. It sounds like a role has been assigned incorrectly.

A number of solutions exist for this: 1. If your staff have laptops with SIMS on board, you can use a VPN to connect directly into SIMS. 2. You can use something like Citrix or Terminal Services 3. You can use our Learning Gateway 4. You can use spreadsheets and export/import them. (This option takes up more of your time.)

Mike, thanks for the acknowledgement! If we have concrete walls around SIMS that is just as it needs to be – we don’t want any accusations that pupil data isn’t safe! SIMS was started 21 years ago but the current design bears little relationship to what we have today! You can get the data that you want to do “in year variations” by using BOs. I don’t think SIF or a report generator could get to the data you need. Olcinm, I can see why you think that we are sending out mixed messages by using a modified SIF in our partnership exchange. We are using a bastardised version of SIF as a data transport mechanism for a limited range of data between schools that share pupils. If the ZIS annual pupil charges remain as we have seen then we may indeed move away from SIF. Our implementation would not get a SIF approved tick. The IMS standard doesn’t include assessment or attendance data so it isn’t suitable. We have at least 100 partners (who make profits) that link to SIMS via the run-time report generation or using Business Objects. This gives them full access to the data in SIMS and in the BO case they can write data back as well. SIF would not replace most of these partners needs because they want to get to the data that SIMS stores. Take for example document exchange, SIF doesn’t support it and even if it did broadcasting documents around the network would not be very efficient. Interoperability is not easy. If SIF is funded it might just work but it will require massive changes in all MIS to make it happen. Then the question will be whether to take things to the lowest common denominator or not. In my view small players will not be able to afford to produce SIF compliant systems.

I have to admit that we are running behind but I am confident that they will be released in December 07. Pricing depends on a lot a factors so LAs can get bulk discounts, we can host SharePoint for you etc. Our sales desk can help with the pricing 01234 838080.

Hi TeddyKGB - If I am guessing your school correctly, there is a case logged with a SQL error but it is flagged as having "little or no impact". That is the wrong priority so I'll get someone to look at your posting/case and get back to you.

The new version is a complete re-write based on feedback from the first generation of our webparts. It is significantly more configurable, there are lots of new features and it is based on MOSS 2007.

It depends on your needs. Take a look at BOs - absolutely everything that our developers use is available.

TeddyKGB - don't know the answer to this but SIMS specific help is answered quickly on SupportNet.

The SDK is a roylaty free means of getting data out of SIMS easily. It can do everything that JonnyMac has described his interface as doing. It is does an adequate job. If you want to use the same business objects as our developers that is possible. Go to our web site and look up the partner programme. We have over 100 partners that make a living from using one or the other. We cannot support schools that have code added to the SIMS database. It is just not practical.

Hi Olcinm Lots of questions here and not enough time to do them justice! IMS Simple questions first. IMS is designed to link two or more systems with their own data stores and we do use IMS to link SIMS to Learnwise. SIMS has web parts for SharePoint, they don’t use IMS because our web parts link directly to SIMS with no intermediate store. When you use one of our web parts you are editing the data through the business objects in SIMS directly. As I understand things Fronter is implementing IMS links. At the moment IMS is not a two way process i.e. Assessment data is not passed back to the MIS and progress on this is stalled because we need clarity on what is happening with SIF. The IMS link though is complete enough to update the VLE with pupil, teacher and group information quite a plus point in terms of managing the VLE. I can’t see how the promotion of IMS limits the field to the big players – specs are in the public domain, transport of data is FOC. We can’t speak for the other VLE providers and why they might endorse SIF. CTF Will SIF replace CTF? Not exactly but I’m sure that it could be used to transport the data. This is beyond my knowledge however I don’t think this is straight forwards. How does the receiving school know which pupils are coming to it and activate the listener? When the child is still at the feeder school, what happens to changes made to the child’s record in the receiver school? Do they automatically go back to the feeder i.e. someone else is changing your records? Indeed I believe that SIF has the concept of one owner for the data item so would the receiver school be able to alter the record before admission? Would the whole process have to be managed by an application at the LA – probably. Has SIF solved the problem – in my opinion no. It has got the data from A to C via B. SIF In our opinion there are huge outstanding questions around SIF. Should a school really transmit pupil/staff data to an anonymous agent that is asking, without question? SIF does not give a school the option to refuse to supply data. The UK is working towards a SIF data standard and so at present there is no means of gaining SIF accreditation. The proof of concept in Birmingham involved data dumps of about 100 data items from schools to the LA and 1 from the LA to schools; this is very primate. To work properly, agents would need to transmit incremental data changes, the range of data has to be increased enormously and suspense processing put into SIMS. Creating agents across the whole of SIMS is likely to cost around £1m so we need our LAs to be demanding that we do this work and at present the demands are very low. In fact at a recent LA user group we were instructed not to spend their money on SIF. If you look at the Becta PWC report on the Proof of Concept which available on their web site, it is not a resounding endorsement of SIF. If SIF is to work in the UK it needs to be mandated by DCSF and funded. If this happened SIF might work. I can’t quote you costs for gaining SIF accreditation, getting approval of your agent (for each version) or indeed the annual pupil charges because they are not in the public domain and we are all guessing. A number of our smaller partners have investigated and said that they cannot afford to implement SIF. Partnership Exchange A trick question if ever I saw one! Firstly yes we are using a ZIS in this solution. However SIF allows a supplier to add supplier specific info so we have added fields to hold temporal data. We have also defined messages for specific attendance at period level. More importantly we have added intelligence to each data item. This tells our agent why the data has been sent and allows us to act appropriately. This isn’t a standard SIF implementation.

It will

I can't tell from your profile who you are and work out who supports you! Assuming that you are working in a Rochdale school and are supported by them call 01706 365676. If not then either PM me with your details or call our Bedford centre and ask them to let you know. 01234-838080.

In which case please log a case so we can follow it up. Thanks

Thanks John - now I understand.

John, I have asked our partner manager to contact you because Bromcom are using exactly the same calls as our developers but we are not seeing a large growth in the DB. I understand that SQL 2005 records more and the size is to do with the number of calls that are being made to the DB. There is nothing in the November release that addresses a growing log.

Desi - I would like to follow up your comment to find out exactly when you placed a call and how long you were kept waiting.