penfold_99

A moodle account can be created during the login/ ldap authentication process or pre built via the cron job. Yes. You need to map AD fields to fields within moodle so when an account is created it will have the right details.

Here is a link to rchutch's article. Scalability | The SIF Place

So i could be possible for PX to be waiting for a request for 4 minutes while trying to poll again after 2 minutes of waiting?

Dual Core Xeon (speed unsure as currently dont have remote access), SQL standard, 3GB. It only gets hammered when users are logged into sims.

Brilliant better late than never, this was originally going to be in the june upgrade. Will the upgrade allow you to define the default polling time as currently the SIMS server at the school im moving to is getting hammered as it been set to low. the server is at 100% CPU, now teachers aren't in the CPU is about 3%.

Care to expand? If a ZIS only supported Pull and you have the possibility of 10 Agents per school polling every 10 seconds and over 150+ schools, the load the ZIS will be under will be huge, but if the ZIS supported Push the load on the ZIS will be reduced as messages would only be created when data changed.

Push facilitates more than just limiting polling of data, is allows for tighter integration. Tasks can be reactive to data change instead of scheduled allowing for real time data viewing.

As I was asking on behalf of a school nothing but they didn't release the full documentation, apparently there is 10gb of documentation but i have yet to see this exists. The furtherest i got was logging in through the business objects but that's where the documentation stopped, i couldn't work out how to get at the pupils records without an documentation. If i wanted to be a capita partner it would be £5000 and bound by a restricted NDA that's not compatible with open source.

I have got a reply back from SIF UK. The main point of the email to them what do see if there was any discount available for open source products and the short answer is no. Anyone who develops a SIF Agent or ZIS Server will need to be a SIF UK member so they can have unlimited access to the test suite, this starts at £1250 a year. To get a product certified you need to pay a certification fee of ~£1400 plus a renewal fee of £335 if no re-testing is needed but if re-testing is needed the renewal fee is~£600, if you update the product you will need to pay ~£600. There is cheaper membership available for Government / RBC = £1500 University = £1000 LEA = £500 Colleges = 600 Schools £235/335 (non voting/voting) @OFS (matt) i might be able to offer some sponsorship to help the certification cost (PM Me). After the certification process is completed would you be able to develop a open source Moodle ZIS agent?

How could open source compromise security? I would be interested to know how you can substantiate that remark?

AFAIK the school can't unless it can be restricted under the DPA, as effectively all LA maintained schools come under the legal identity of the LA. There is also the issues of connexions as they are legally responsible for the students education/workplace transition until they are 25. If the LA had an agreement with a third party they will share data, the only obligation is inform the parents.

I thought it might be slightly different. MIS <-> MIS Agent <-> School ZIS <-> ZIS2ZIS Agent <-> LA ZIS <-> ZIS2ZIS Agent <-> DCFS ZIS Is the above possible? This would allow integration with other systems at every level of the chain and every schools would have have data for only the students they teach.

More proposing the idea, than saying its possible. As no one has stated you can't join ZIS's together in a chain then it should be possible. I'm mainly raising these questions as it could be something missed or not thought of in conversation that have previously been had.

This wouldn't be a problem if the topology was correct. As if a student was attending two schools this would be tagged in the LA ZIS and the schools ZIS should only pull information for students tagged with there school. There acces to thsi information could be controlled by the certidfication of the ZIS agents for a given application. The consortia wouldn't then need there own ZIS.

Why are you wanting to restrict data in the SIF when it could be actually required. Everyone along the SIF chain needs access to all the information they require. Can't this be governed with the SIFUK certification process? Agents would require a digital certificate when they request information from the zis it passes of the certificate first and then the zis only returns information allowed by the certificate. So a ZIS further down the SIF chain would contain the same information as a ZIS further up the chain but only for the students/contacts that are relevant to there school/la.

Whay can't an LA have all the students listed as guest in a LA sims, that would ensure a vested interest? So are you saying Becta and SIFA UK do not recognise this issues as real and a security problem? This could also be said but using any piece of software that has a known exploit.

i have emailed the SIFA UK person at becta but there away on annual leave and will be back monday.

@PhilNeal I can see the issue about security, but student information is shared between schools, la's and government. You've solve one problem but inadvertently caused another one which is much bigger, due to the focus which as you stated as being on schools. Another solution could have been take a step back and look at the wider issue of data sharing between Schools, LA's and Government. Apart from the Schools wish not to share data, what were the other factors taken into account for this decision? So the debate can continue. Can ZIS be joined together? If they could, an LA ZIS would hold all the students records for children in education in there LA, a schools ZIS would have the information for students they teach. The government could have a ZIS which holds the information of all the students in education in the country fed from the LA ZIS's. This would remove the need for CTF files as the information required for a schools is held on at least two other ZIS. Examination board could feed the information into the government ZIS and then it would filter down to the schools. Could what i suggest work within the defined SIF standard?

Hi Rob, I have read the article about the moodle agent, it looks very interesting, one issues i can see being very time consuming to set up all the mapping. How does your system handle the enrolment? does your agent modify the database directly or have you written a custom enrol plugin that talks to the moodle agent?

I would whole heartily agree with that statement. If only it happened.

The whole point of getting ZIS Agent's from MIS provider, is that if your a third party, would be able to develop your product to integrate with a ZIS API instead of having to develop it for every MIS API. There is a cost saving for the third party as they wont have to partner with every MIS provider, they will only have to be a SIF UK member.

It's all about choice, the capita/microsoft way is to lock you in, SIF goes against that by making it easier to integrate systems that use the same information. If a school had a ZIS in place they would be able to integrate additional services without being tied to a particular MIS. If the schools decided to move MIS, they would only require the new one to have ZIS Agent so it can continue to integrate with other services.

Good idea to get back on topic. on a side note It might be worth you have a look at the edugeek linux forum http://www.edugeek.net/forums/nix/

On the face of it this could be a big problem, but one way in a standard why is a start. There is OpenSADK to allow people to interface with the SIF/ZIS.

SIF/ZIS is a better alternative to business objects, Capita's issue would be why would companies partner with them when they could just become a member of SIF UK? Joining SIF UK would allow companies to integration there product with SIF/ZIS, (which would then in turn talk to any compatible MIS) instead of writing an integration process of each MIS.