Adam_C

Originally I'd not thought about using the Setups folder - I was thinking that you would have a copy of the installation CD that was used to install your copy of SIMS. However looking at it I think the Setups folder will probably work. My suggestion would be to copy the Setups folder onto your VM and run SIMSInst.exe. If this doesn't work my only suggestion is to request a copy of the installation CD for the version you are running. (Are you sure you don't have this CD lying around somewhere?).

You will need to perform the following steps (these are the same steps as when installing training data). I installed training data onto a VM without any problems: 1) Install a new (blank) instance of SIMS onto you VM (the same version as your production version). 2) Copy your D:\SIMS directory from your production server on top of the same directory on your VM. (I believe D:\ is the default installation drive - you may very well have SIMS installed onto a different drive; propbably C:). 3) If the drive names are different on your production server and your VM you will need to update all the paths on your VM to point at the correct drive. The instructions for the installation of the training data don't give exact locations of paths that need updating but I updated the following files and have found that a majority of the SIMS system works: D:\SIMS\SNOVA\NOVAP\PathDef.ini D:\SIMS\Star\DATAMAN.INI If you find any problems running modules etc. my suggestion is to download AgentRansack (freeware) and search within your SIMS directory on the VM for the drive name on your server and replace the instances with the drive name on your VM. 4) Browse to: "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.1\MSSQL\Data" on your production server. copy the MDF and LDF files for your schools database into the same directory on your VM. 5) on the VM; using the dbAttach facility attach the MDF file you've just copied over. 6) Copy the D:\DOCSERVER directory from your production server on top of the same directory on you VM. Hope that helps. Adam.

Thanks Phil.

If I type 12820 into the 'Site Search' box on the home page I am met with the message: 'no matches found'. It shouldn't matter but the account I am using to access WebSupport is a partner account... If i go into Web Support|Solution Search The only options in the 'Software Suite' drop down are 'SIMS' and 'SIMS Third Party'. If I select 'SIMS' with 'any' for product and enter "IMS" into the 'all of these words' box I get 2 results - none of them link me to resource 12820.

If my first post is correct, then option 2 (i.e. the Public Interface) is freely available to all school users (Third party developers have to pay £5k to first get a copy of SIMS) providing you are only reading data (if you are writing data to SIMS that is an additional £5k for support) - the public interface has a COM API aswell as a number of .net objects which can be used to interact with the database. Phil (Neal), as our resident Capita representative is all this correct?

Do any of you guys schedule reports? If so have you now got problems? I have found that this error prevents the schedule from working. (presumably AutoReport.exe attempts to log in to the SQL Server as user 'sims').

Thanks for replying Phil. I'm already using a SupportNet account, but have not found the search capabilities to be much use (perhaps there are access restrictions to the documentation I can see?, or I'm not using it right?). For example I have just searched for Resource Number 12820 in the resources centre but nothing has been returned. I've also tried the text search in both the resources and also the solution search with numerous strings (such as: 'SDK', 'CommandReporter' ... ) to no avail. If I search for 'IMS' in the solution search various articles do come back but none point me in the direction of any documentation (one does mention 'IMS VLE Export Tool manual' but I have no idea how to get my hands on such a document!). It's all rather frustrating!

Thanks for replying. I was hoping a majority if my understanding was right! Do you know where I can get any further information regarding the IMS/web service stuff - I can't seem to find any information even remotely related to web services on the Capita web site? Have you actually used any of these methods to integrate with SIMS before? Adam

Hi, this is my first post! I realize I'm starting a new post on a subject already fairly well covered but it seems that no-one is quite sure of the options available (I'm certainly not!) and the Capita web site is not particularly clear. I feel some clarification would be well received. According to the Capita web site (http://www.capitaes.co.uk/SIMS/Partners/Interface.asp) there are 2 options for interfacing with SIMS. Those are: Option 1 - SIMS Reporting Engine: My understanding of data extraction via the SIMS reporting engine is that it consists of 2 executables; CommandReporter.exe - an executable which allows programmatic report execution. and CommandReportImporter.exe which allows programmatic importing of report definitions. According to a post in the topic entitled 'Programatic data extraction from SIMS.net Data Base' there are some examples of this executable being used to return data to a C# program. I believe this documentation is available from a Capita representative and is entitled 'Third Party Access to SIMS.net SDK' (I'm getting this from the help displayed when running these executables) is this all correct? Option 2 - Third Party SDK (aka SIMS Public Interface): This consists of a number of COM and .net objects (these are the Business Objects mentioned in various places) which can be used to access the SIMS database. Documentation is available for the objects and methods free of charge however the .zip files containing the documentation are encrypted - in order to obtain the password a 'standard non-disclosure agreement' must be signed. Using this interface allows data to be written to as well as read from the database. However if anyone wishes to use the SDK to write to the database there is a £5k licensing fee to cover support costs. It is free to use this SDK if your code only reads from SIMS. Is all of this correct? I quote the following from a topic entitled 'Extracting data from an MIS' (posted by Phil Neale): "SIMS includes IMS Enterprise as standard; a free key is available from your support unit. This web service can incrementally update a VLE with student, staff and class data. A third party can buy a licensed copy of SIMS for £5000. Capita does not charge third parties licence fees for reading data from SIMS. There are licence fees for creating routines that write back to SIMS and for that we guarantee that we will make every attempt to fix a schools data should something go wrong. We employ a team to support this activity." - This sounds similar to my understanding of the 3rd Party SDK but with a few more acronyms (IMS, VLE) thrown in for good effect, where does all this fit in? If anyone can help clarify the situation I would be extremely grateful Adam