garrysaddington

Perhaps a slack attitude to type conversion was tightened up in the upgrade.

No chance of this I'm afraid until government gain the 'b****' to standardise/back one product/stop being scared of big business, or all three.

That is not entirely fair, unless of course you back up your assertion of inferior product by explanation. I have nothing to do with Bromcom by the way.

This error message tends to suggest that there is a data type conversion of varchar to int that is starting with data that is not in an integer format, eg. 2.5 cannot be converted to an integer. Either the original input data is invalid or the SIMS programming, I can't tell which.

Yes if you would like to call it that, but I don't mean by the LEA. I really meant to say Software as a service (SAAS).

Somewhere in this forum I have seen some disparaging comments about running MIS systems on web servers only allowing access over the internet, ie. not a local install. I wonder if anyone has any arguments for or against running MIS servers in the (so called) 'cloud' ?

I have pm'd you on this matter.

Do you actually know what you are talking about? Open source does not mean open data source, do not continue to propagate rubbish without first doing your homework.

I mean that each teacher inputs their own custom comments for reports to parents, followed by comments from pastoral and slt staff as well as exam results etc. The software then assembles them into printable reports to be mailed to parents or displayed through a parent's portal. I think its called statutory reporting to parents that needs to be done yearly?

Does facility/eportal have a reporting to parents function, ie. to produce written reports for mailing? If it does not then what do most people use for this faeture?

Just a stab in the dark really. How is dns accessed? We once had a similar problem (not SIMS though) when dns was actually being served by the internet router and we had to install dns internally, because if the router died so did all our thin clients. Of course if you are using an external dns server and internet goes down then..... HTH Regards Garry

I have developed a web based messaging server. The system does: 1/Weekly bulletin 2/Daily messages 3/Teacher messages 4/Calendar 5/ICT bug reporting 6/Resource booking 7/Installs on Windows with no set up. All web based including admin. If you would like to trial it give me a shout. Regards Garry

In as much as the source will be open and the cost to schools will be £0 and schools will have the basic freedoms of free software. Please contact me off list if you are still interested in helping out, and we can discuss things further.

I agree it is terrible, but I don't really have much time for advertisement. My time is spent developing ScholarPack. One of the members is correct that it is in use in a school as a direct replacement for proprietary systems. It does all the governement stuff, census, CTF etc. as well as electronic attendance,reporting, admin etc and is totally web based and uses all Open Source components. I have just given up my teaching job to concentrate on getting ScholarPack ready for release this year, this includes refactoring much of the interface in Flex, with a Zope and Postgresql backend. At present it stands at about 100,000 lines of code and over 250 database tables. Expect a small stand at BETT 2010 (skint!! any sponsors?). If anyone needs any more info. or would like a demo or to trial it then you can reply here or contact me directly: [email protected] Sorry about the website it is rubbish! Garry