Ian_ICTDS

Are you going to go as far back as Spectrum / Amstrad / Commodore? Games on tape, and waiting 20 mins for them to load would blow their mind. (Also, as above a trip to Bletchley Park would be cool too in my opinion).

I don't think there is too much risk because if you browse the database the mothod is quite easy to see. Although, it's better to be safe than sorry. I'll remove the code from my original post. Ian

Hi All, I have a SQL script that we use in the office (I work for the LA) when we are testing data that schools send us. It sets the password of whatever user you like to whatever password you like. I personally would never use it on a live site for the reasons discussed above but I thought people might like to know how it’s done out of curiosity or for reasons we use it. There are two halves to changing the password. You have to set the record within the SIMS database and then you have to update the actual SQL user account. It gets a little tricky because SIMS encrypts the password it uses for the SQL user. Luckily there is a stored procedure to do this for us. Here is the script (Again, don’t use it on live sites): Code removed following a request from a mod. Ian.

That's good news Ash. I'm glad I could help. Ian

Hi, I feel your pain. We’ve been distributing SIMS and FMS to workstations through remote app for the last couple of years. Our biggest headache has always been printing in FMS but we have finally got to the bottom of it. The problem is that finance is very impatient. It captures the printers at the point it is launched rather than waiting until printing is actually needed. This is a problem because when a terminal services connection is made, printers are not mapped until after the application has actually launched. This means FMS thinks no printers are attached because terminal service has not yet had chance to map the printers. We got around this by writing a small application that waits 10 seconds before launching FMS. This gives the TS connection time to map the printers before FMS runs and captures them. Hope this helps. Ian.

Hi, As far as I know, Exams reads it's data from the same tables as the rest of SIMS .net so I don't think there would be a way to only restore exams data. What type of data is showing incorrectly in Exams? Ian.

You are really limited on the PC for split screen games. Even games that have split screen mode on the consoles tend not to have it on the PC. (Although L4D and L4D2 you can tinker with the config files to allow you to do it). The none FPS ones I have had most fun with have been Blur and Sonic All Stars Racing. Both are carting games. The sonic ones not too bad as single player too. Now if you want to try something completely different you could give Sleep is Death a go. It’s a multiplayer storytelling kind of game. You make a scene for someone and then they explore it and will do something. You then respond then they have a play again. It can get very weird very fast. Ian.

If my memory serves me right you can normally set a multi-core processor to act like a single-core one in the bios somewhere. This would allow single threaded applications to use all four cores as if they where one but to the detriment of everything else. Ian. EDIT: I'm talking on a client PC here to help pulsar. I wouldn't dream of doing this on a server.

Hi, We have about 80 schools using SIMS and FMS through remote app. The main problem we’ve had, like you, is that configuration and dll files often can not be found. What I’ve noticed in the past is that on the terminal server it creates a Windows directory within C:\Users\[username]\Windows. Often the files in that windows directory are out of sync with the ones in the real Windows directory. You can either correct the files in the users windows folder or delete the folder forcing the terminal server to recreate them. This has solved most of our problems, specifically with FMS. The only ongoing issue we have with remote app is printing from FMS. FMS is quite temperamental with detecting printers mapped using TS easy print. Good luck Ian

If you’re a fan of SIMS I think Capita (or was it one of their partners) offer a hosted SIMS solution that you access over VPN though a browser. Or if you can wait a few years rumours are SIMS v8 will be fully web based and hosted in ‘the cloud’.

It does sound like your data extractor and/or uploader has completely broke. Looks like your going to need to nag your county support to fix it. This is interesting; I’ve been told that the 64bit compatible data extractor hasn’t been released yet. This is holding us back helping some of our school that have moved to 64bit. Looks like I need a little word with RM

Hi, We use Kaleidos here in Warwickshire but I don’t know if our setup is the same as yours. Do you use UPMS to extract the data from SIMS? If so, you should have a service called ‘RM Data Extractor’ and ‘RM MIS DataCentre Uploader’ running on your SIMS server. In my experience there are three reasons for data not updating in Kaleidos. Firstly the data is invalid in SIMS, secondly UPMS is broke, thirdly you have no connection to the RM datacentre. To check the validity of your data navigate to ‘C:\Program Files\RM\RM MIS Data\Extract\Reports\\Rejected’. There should be a CSV file in there that will show you any data that couldn’t be processed and reasons. To check if UPMS is working navigate to ‘C:\Program Files\RM\RM MIS Data\Transfer’. Check the date of the PGF file in there. It should be at some time today. If this file is old it points to UPMS been broke and probably will need someone from your county support to fix. If both of these are fine it suggests something is going wrong with the upload to the RM Datacentre. You can check this by navigating to ‘C:\Program Files\RM\RM MIS DataCentre Uploader’. If something’s wrong you’ll see a number of log files to have a look at. You can also manually test the connection by the SoapClientTestApp in that directory. I hope this helps you move things forward but our set up may be completely different to yours. Good luck.

Hi, I can’t help with all your questions but I can add the little I know. I have the ITIL V3 Foundation Certificate. It was an intensive 3 day course with a multiple choice exam at the end. It was hard work but actually quite interesting. I think it cost around £900 but work paid for it. I work within an ITIL based service desk environment so we try and get all our service desk staff and technicians some level of training in it. If you were to apply for a job here, having prior knowledge of ITIL would be very beneficial but we don’t expect our candidates to do so. Hopes this helps a little. Good luck. Regards, Ian

@Vik, thanks for that information. Really usefull. @rh91uk, I agree, in your situation having lots of aspects does sound best. The only thing I would add is that make sure you use some sort of result set / sets with those aspects. I've got myself in all sorts of messes in the past without them.

Glad I could help.

Hi Rich, If these are one off tests that a student would only do once I would probably have one aspect called something like "End of Unit Test" and a number of resultsets for each subject. If they take the test more than once then I would have an aspect for each subject and a result set for each reporting period. As long as you always use some sort of combination of aspect and result set you should not run into too many problems in the future. The only time I've had trouble is when I've ignored resultsets and relied on result date. I hope this makes sence, Gool Luck Ian.

I forgot all about it TBH. Still a good idea though.

Hopefully SOLUS3 will resolve the problem with site specific patches so all can be sent though that process and then they wouldn’t need to be emailed.

Site specific patches don’t come through SOLUS. This is an ongoing problem with the system. If the patch is to fix a problem with your data then Capita will need to email you the patch directly or through your LA. When Capita send you a patch it contains a signature file. When you run a patch through DBUpgrade it checks the signature file to make sure it is valid. This ensures that the SQL script is from Capita and has not been edited somewhere along the way. Of course if the signature was invalid you could still run the script directly into SQL without using DBUpgrade but that wouldn’t be a good idea.

Surely absorbing electricity that the BBC has paid for to broadcast radio is a kind of theft. The same would apply to absorbing next doors wireless output.

Oh well. Thay's me out of bright ideas for the day. Good luck.

Hi, I’m not sure if this would be the same for you but I had the same trouble with my Windows 7 64bit install at home. After a lot head scratching I realised that my system date was wrong. All the security certificates were invalid because my computer date was sometime in the past (or future, I can’t remember). Sounded too simple to believe when I did it but it seemed to work. Hope this helps, Regards, Ian.

How about printing them using the XPS or Office document writer that most computers have pre-installed under printers. This would probably take a while though if you've got a lot of documents to print.

I assume Apple have a RDP client compatible with Windows. Could the user not just RDP onto a windows PC and run SIMS from there?

You should be fine as long as you do not choose to drop logins. You don’t actually have to move the MDF and LDF out of the data folder but that warning is there because if you accidently pick the wrong MDF you can end up overwriting your database by accident. Detaching and re-attaching is a common solution. Usually the one you do after 'turning it off and on again'.