MattMitchell

I do think there should be a common interchange framework and an open api (even a read-only one would be a start). CTF is well-defined but doesn't cover all the requirements unfortunately, hence the problems in exchanging data; and I'm worried SIF will go the same way. You're preaching to the converted as far as choice goes penfold!

Our LA is very committed to SIMS and consequently (almost?) all schools in the area license it from them. I find myself working against some major issues in SIMS' implementation but I can't really advocate switching elsewhere - I need to make sure I can be replaced if I leave/jump under a bus/etc. Open source isn't always cheaper. One of our big costs is support and staffing. What an open standard would do, is increase pressure for vendors like Capita to increase functionality, as it wouldn't be so essential to buy IBM (as it were). As long as the software fulfils statutory requirements, anything else is a lucky bonus and schools are unlikely to change supplier because of a "nice to have" feature. Everyone has features they'd like to see in SIMS, but few would change vendor if they didn't get them. A lot of schools are doing their analysis and tracking outside of SIMS, using third-party software. Sheffield LA (not my LA btw) are developing their own KS2 tracking software rather than do it in SIMS or demand that the needed functionality be added, and I think this is very telling.

An open interface is important - I can see the need to extend the standard to allow acces control, but I'd like to see a push to have that as part of the SIF rather than a "we've already done it our way - would you like to be a partner?" approach. At the moment, linking schools means a requirement for a common platform. This is good for business, but reduces choice and is directly counter to the overall aim of a common, open interchange framework.

Peter - how do you get hold of the sdk?

Net count for behaviour and attendance - I've got an ongoing support log on this one as sims fails to run the report for this! If anyone's made it work let me know...

Depends - if you want behaviour points by maths teaching group, for example, you might find that tricky in sims...

Analysis reports are for doing cross-tabulation - what you'd call a pivot table in excel / access / SQL server. They do run at the client end, so if you're analysing 40000 behaviour entries it may not be instant, but if a report outputs the data then you can do it. There's a strong case for not using excel as this simplifies things and means the report will always be live.

There are published guidelines and a fairly precise data dictionary for CTF exchange, along with an xsd schema, etc. I've not looked too closely at the SIF stuff for data interchange as the configurability of sims, serco, etc renders a lot of it moot. There are plenty of published information standards though.

Works just fine on my machine.

You can do it in SIMS using an analysis report, but it will run client-side, so it may depend on your hardware and what time interval you're covering.

I think that software that can improve children's lives is *very* exciting, which is why I like this job so much! The purchase or licensing cost isn't the main issue, the support is where there will always be a cost centre - and that's the same whether you're open or closed source. Although i'm an OSS fan, I can see a strong case for keeping source closed in order to keep the vendor viable.

;-) It might be worth your while looking at becoming a SIMS partner - I know that if a SISRA add-on existed for SIMS, I'd probably be pushing for us to get it! It probably wouldn't be a huge stretch to implement, and with a bit of care you could have a common code base for a web and a SIMS version - just a thought...

I'll check with our network admins if you want but I would expect you could just take a backup of the old database (using dbattach) and restore it into the new server, making sure you have the right user accounts and so-on created. It might be worth taking an image to have a virtualised version of the old server available just in case as well. Or build a new machine if the option's available.

I think it might be worth amending the answer a little, to explain that it's easy to upload the data from an Excel spreadsheet - that seems to be the benchmark for "achievable" for non-techie teachers, and I know that our non-DBA exams officer found uploading to SISRA simple, in fact far simpler than I find getting data into SIMS as a developer (SQL, C, C++, Perl, PHP, a little PL-SQL, etc).

Welcome welcome welcome! Wonder if there's an emoticon for :coffee: ? Matt

I'd imagine it's more a case of /supporting/ the iPhone; in terms of a mobile solution, iPhone would not be my choice of deployment platform, lovely as they are! HTTP /would/ be called SLG2, but I see no reason why the lesson monitor functionality shouldn't be a part of SIMS anyway: people and devices are becoming more and more mobile and tying SIMS to a desktop/laptop is not a good strategy. I see behaviour products that work on PDA (or other small portable thing) so that incidents can be logged at source, ID/pass-out checking at gates, etc. You could do a lot with a mobile device.

Yikes @ shared hosting site... It was already being used before I started, but thanks for the heads-up: I'll look into that. Ironically, our LA has recommended it to me as well, although as I said we're already using it. As far as data transfer goes, it just takes a csv file as input, with student names, class codes, socioeconomic factors like FSM, etc, and then a series of columns for exam names. You set which subjects are which types of exam (GCSE, BTEC 1st Cert, etc) and also can indicate maths, English and science (for those pesky National Challenge headline figures, etc.) It will work with anything, not just SIMS, and does not interface directly with your software or site in any way, shape or form. You just upload data to the webpage. It calculates capped points score, grade residuals per subject (and will factor in the national averages too in order to get a more useful statistic), and can do most analyses I can think of (off the top of my head) that you would, or could, do provided with the student basic info and the exam results. The security aspect does concern me somewhat, and I shall get in contact with them. If there is that risk there, then I shall provide our exams officer with a replacement set of no-names: just a (non-identifiable) set of unique IDs to use and something like "John/Jane Doe" for the student names. This will remove any data protection concerns, and yet still provide the analyses. I think I might have a chat with our LA team as well... I'll post back here once I've had a proper look!

That's fair comment Phil - i know i'm after an iphone and although it's pretty it's not the best tech - it just has all the best apps!

Actually quite a few things can't be done in sims - plot a chance graph of attendance against performance, calculate capped points score against anything outside of the exams module, calculate CPS in general., calculate residuals without opening a multiple sequence of marksheets to perform calculations, do anything in assessment analysis plotted against any non-assessment fields... There is a lot that sims CAN do though, and most of the time people slating sims just don't know what it can do/how to do it. Data analysis in schools seems to be a relatively new field, and some of the stuff we're implementing here like estimated CVA scores is beyond the scope of what most people are working at, so in some senses i probably have a skewed opinion of sims's capabilities. That said, the vast majority, if not all, of the things being done in our school in excel at present, can be done easily in sims and i am looking to have everyone enter all their data directly into sims and nowhere else.

Definitely yes, but a java app or http version would work on more clients.

SISRA is rather good actually! In terms of price for what it is, it's very reasonable - i can't remember what we're paying but it's certainly worth it compared to comparable software, namely a custom-written piece of software or a mid+ range statistical package plus someone who can work it effectively... It produces a good range of reports and analyses on exam results (or targets or predictions), handles residuals well, shows results broken down by teaching group, etc and works well with the kind of data most schools produce for exam results. In other words, it can handle the appalling non-normalised spreadsheets with silly column headings that most schools, and software like sims, tend to produce! Our exam officer, who is neither a statistician nor a developer, has learnt to use it and has made a very full and effective set of analyses that i would be happy to show an ofsted inspector! All this, and we can make as many read-only logins as we want to allow our subject leaders to see their own reports without any help. Get it. Seriously! SIMS really cannot do what this can, and it's going to save me a lot of work.

Charting is OK - it's the issue of not being able to access the data within SIMS in the right way, and not being able to access it outside of SIMS without having to export it first...

I'm running up against a few limitations in SIMS (can you say "plot assessment results against attendance" anybody?) and am considering the roll-your-own method; really, though, it's frustrating because I'd much rather do it all within SIMS. After all, if it's worked in the main system everything's a lot more integrated and simpler, especially if they have a major re-working that breaks external software...

We use SIMSPERMS.BAT to set up the access rights - this machine I'm using updates SIMS fine but I don't have admin access to it as a whole. I believe it's a question of allowing write access to the SIMS program folder.

Is your source table stored in Access or MS-SQL? Probably the best way is to have a bit of VB code that will read in the un-normalised data and just populate a more normalised table (i.e. with the output in the form you're after) in code.