Banjo

I'm not sure you are correct with this. The instance holds the SA account (master db) but the SIMS/FMS databases have the DBO accounts in them and the SA account by default is mapped to the DBO role. Anyone that logs into the instance using the SA account is by default the DBO of SIMS/FMS. If your SQL instance breaks - create a new one, I’d recommend adding local administrators to the login role of the instance as this gives you sysadmin on the instance using window authentication. Attach the SIMS/FMS backups to a new instance of SQL using the Capita dbattach tool(s) and away you go. If your master is corrupt – then it has to be new SQL instance as a minimum and I’d be looking to flatten the box as I wouldn’t trust it to not happen again. We have disaster recovered quite a few times and never bothered with the master.

I do :-) However, I'm 'old skool' just because its new or this year’s model doesn't mean I want to throw away my old toys and go out and buy shiny new ones. The world is full of products that weren't as good as the ones that preceded them.

Yes - Caspa and B2 talk to each other. Collect the assessments in B2 and then graph them and benchmark (National captured data) in Caspa (from memory)

Wait until the end of this academic year or suffer in a world of pain :-)

The CTF's wont bring in the attendance. Depending on when you convert (varies the amount) you will need to go back into the previous academic year and fill in the attendance there as well for Census. @Michael > Windows XP became legacy when Vista was released... not sure I agree with the point you are making :-)

You can create aspects in sims that can collect P scales and subsets of P scales ie P3ii etc as well the old fashion levels 1c or 1c+ - these just need to be created once in a gradeset and you can add a points value (optional) against each grade so the marksheet can do some 'maths' in the background. Not used Pivots before. In our LA most special schools use B2 - and pull students names out of SIMS.

It's the date stamping that causes the headache. We have a PC not connected to the network with date and time update turned off so we can backfill the data in SIMS. Primary isn't too bad, a couple and you can get a working SIMS db without attendance. Block fill all present > and then add in the lates/abs from the registers in Facility. We get the schools to do this bit as its a real bum ache and it saves them money.

If it were me, I'd sign up with my local LA or a local support team. You are going to need a lot of hand holding moving across to SIMS and training with all the modules. The support team can offer this (it might be an all in price) and you will certainly gets your monies worth in year 1. From memory Capita require about 12 Excel (.csv) and CTF's files from Facility that they merge to produce your new SIMS database. The service wasn't that much money and it used to be project managed by Capita so I'd advise you go that route. I've done SIMS (Pri & Sec) conversions to Facility and Facility primary back to SIMS myself, but I wouldn't do Facility secondary to SIMS without Capita's help. I'm a wimp :-)

primary or secondary? Primary is fairly easy, we've done plenty but needs to be timed right in the year to avoid a backfill overload of attendance data. Secondary > speak to Capita. Even sending your data off to them, it can take 3 or 4 attempts to get it right, and even then the school has a lot of work to do to move stuff manually across.

We only install one VM per box. The servers that the VM and SIMS sits upon meets the specs for SIMS with headroom. When you start adding other VM's then you have to go back and look at hardware side again, which pushes costs up. We have an image with SIMS installed and ready to go (just missing the DB & Docs). If a server goes bang or gets stolen we can drop this image on a new box and download the SIMS backups and have it in place on site in 1/2 a day.

Nope, do this once a year at most. Put the details forms on the schools website and a notice in the school newsletter (if you email one out) so parents can amend details as necessary.

We use ESXi and it works fine. We don't stack more than 1 OS on the physical box, but the advantage comes as the VM makes the management of the servers easier if anything goes wrong.

Using archiving always gave us problems, best to create a new DB just for this purpose and put the old datasets in there and tuck away the connection file from users.

http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads/2013/08/81.jpg

I wouldn't use the SQL backups but the ones from inside of Facility - they work best. You can copy the whole of the folder structure for Facility off the old server to the new server and it will work. Just update your connection files to point to the new SQL instance. If you use Eportal then you will need the installers and licence codes. Its worth backing up your setting xml and copy then over the top of your new install if you have changed ports etc from the defaults. If you publish your eportal externally then you will need to configure IIS and your certificate.

If there is a SIMS plugin for Symantec then fine. If the script is just stopping the SQL instance - copying the mdf/ldf to another location and then restarting the service you might be in trouble. We use Attix 5 with these plugins for SIMS/Discover/FMS without these you will have difficulty restoring the database(s) as Capita use the dbattach.exe tool. Test the solution you have now, but it doesn't sound promising. .bak files are only made when the db is upgraded/patched or when a user manuualy runs the backup. We don't keep more than 4 or 6 months worth.

Try it offsite and when it doesn't work bounce it back to support as not a firewall issue.

You could probably split the aspect (data entry with formula) with a 'calculate on save/entry' to pick up the stragglers or those moving groups and also added all these 'total' aspects into a master template/marksheet to update at the start of the year. Just be careful in Sept when staff are entering/amending marks for students from the previous year they go into the right 'grade' version.

Yes, it can, I've done them in the past for PRU's so that external providers could logon and mark the student’s attendance. From memory we split the day into 30min slots and then timetabled all the 'teaching events' against each slot every day for the week. We then had to create a TG for each slot and the student’s timetable was purely dependent upon which teaching groups they were dropped in at the start of each week. A complete pain in the bum to set up and administer, especially half way through the term new providers needed to be added and TT. If you don't need to record lesson attendance then stay away from Nova.

I think this is the long way of doing it. If you had created as aspect called "Total out of" and block filled it against all students with the theoretical max total each year it would have been quicker. You could also have tagged it against a result set to change the year.

I'd go with a aspect called TOTAL and assign a mark for all students to it at the start of every term/year and then hide it on the template/marksheet. This is the only was to calculate % and then convert to grades without swapping out all your aspects for new ones each time.

It sounds similar to TTs for PRU's where pupils could move groups every week. You will need to create all the possible scenarios within Nova and then allocate the pupils to the right groups. The allocation of pupils if they move groups tends to be the admin nightmare and keeping track of this.

I'm sure RM were giving Integris away free for 12 months recently - so potentially a short term cost saving to be had.

Once its been installed on a device, unzipping over the top with the newer version works just fine.

You should be able to. I'm not an expert with SQL but the SA account is for the instance and not the DB. You can create a new account using SSMS on the instance and replicate the SA privileges - | Security |Logins | (Server roles) Sysadmin and public (user mappings) all ticks in the top window against all the dbs, DB_owner and public ticked bottom window. If the SQL instance was installed with Builtin\Administrators & Builtin\Users you should be able to do this from the local admin account on the server.