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@Phil Neal. Thanks for the explanation it answers my question. A better way for me to put across my point, why not develop for LDAP instead of Active Directory, as AD is derived from LDAP people with out Active Directory would still be able to use SIMS.net. It's a bad analogy but hope you can follow it. Does the request have to come from our LA or can it come direct from us? Sorry for the million and one questions but we are trying to maximise the benefit of sims.net by integrating into every area of the school, and displaying data in different formats and not necessarily on a windows platform.

@Phil Neal, Thanks for the reply. I am aware SIF is a specification but will you be using MS technology to implement the specification? With regards to the BO's is it possible to get some usage examples of how to to pass information to the dll's and information from them?

To get back up and running after a server failing, could be a little as 10 mins. Have a machine that is capable of running a virtual machine. Create an image and update the image's sims setup folder after every sims upgrade. Have a local backup of the sims.mdf and sims.ldf or a .bak file updated every night. If your primary server fails, boot up the virtual image attach the database and edit your dns setting and sims is back up and running. Keep virtual server running until primary server back up and then once it is copy the sims database back over to the primary server at the end of the day.

Congrats on the new job, Oli must have moved on to pastures new. I have worked in Education IT before? Pop along to the Network Manager Forums East Sussex have they are always interesting for either content but more for the face to the name. Which other NM job did you go for?

no, smoothwall.

I've just a Blackberry Storm and had mine hooked upto OWA 2003 in about 10mins.

@Hightower, Could you expand? as i have never seen a CC3 network

Hi , Yes I am aware of the AD provisioning with SLG. Our LA is looking at hosting our SLG so the we will have to hand over control of our ad domain to allow single sign on. We prefer to use as little MS software as possible, save the continual upgrade cost. I will add your username format to the list, i will look into the folder creation part later on, we currently use a samba server to host out home folders as it creates the home directories on first logon.

What happen if you have two people with the same name?

@Gatt, Thanks Another question to add. Does you ad structure mirror the following structure? OU=[school Name] +=Year [intake Year] ie OU=School += Year 07 += Year 08 etc

Hi all, I am currently in the process of re-writing the sims2ad vb script and changing it to a moodle block. The question i have could people supply the format of their usernames ie [intake Year][initial First Name][initial Middle Name][surname] i would like to include as many formats as possible.

@Phil Neal, Thanks for the clarification on the points above, and the problems with SIF re data protection. Will you be reliant on MS implementation of ZIS? or will be be compaible with Open ZIS - Open Source Zone Integration Server (ZIS) - Zone Integration Terminal (ZIT). With regards to the IMS write back link, what is the rough cost? Would it be possible to get documentation on the database tables? As i would like to write a module for moodle which transferred quiz results back to SIMS.net. We currently have a test sims.net installation in place for our in-house development and updated testing. If the documentation was forth coming it would remove the burden of development costs for you.

@Geoff, Thanks for the script, i have tried to implement but when i do var_dump(ldap_count_entries($l,$sr); nothing is returned. I have set $cookie to a value of 1000, so in theory it should loop three times to get all results. or an i doing this all wrong?

You shouldn't be bale to with a well constructed query and a normalised database. But as sims doesn't have the latter the former is a bit hard.

@srochford i trying to convert a vbs to php, but i think php doesn't have the ability to page like perl and pear can.

Thanks, I think the limit was increased ages ago before i started here.

Hi, I am trying to pull information on all our student account from LDAP. The issue i'm having is i can only get 2500 accounts but Active Directory holds 3500ish. Is there way to increase the ldap result cache, you can do this in vbs by setting "pagesize" but i can't find how to do it in php. Or is there a way to page the results by getting 2500 then the remainder in two calls?

@Phil Neal, Please could you define SIMS Business Objects as this is a very generic term? Are these Business Objects accessible from a non Microsoft OS?

We have received different SDK's from the command line report tool, to the really unhelpful documentation on how to interface to the sims.net dll to get information. Using either of the above still requires middleware to you wanted to integrate sims and an application that runs on linux. By far the easiest why to interface with sims.net is by connecting to the SQL server and using custom views. @Phil Neal, With the caveat of if the data get corrupted we pay to fix it. Would it be possible to have documentation about the SQL Tables and how they relate to each other, this would limit the possible issues of writing back incorrect data?

Hi Richard, Thanks for the blog, you will need to edit it once the next version of SIMS.net timetable is released, i have been able to implement a GUI configuration page in moodle and there will no longer be requirement to manually create the views, this will be done automatically on install.

I was referring to the need for Microsoft Office, when Open Office could be used instead.

Hi Phil, Here's one the kick this off, still no answer to why individual reports are .xml format and if they can be changed to docx, as this still forces you to use a Microsoft product.

Hi GrumbleDock, I am continually try to improve the SIMS.net Timetable module to reduce the needed configuration, i hope to implement a moodle GUI configuration page so non-programming techs can easily setup this module. I'm lucky that i work at a school which is very supportive of OSS. The point i was making with '£0, excluding time' is that if you went with a proprietary product it would be '£xxxx, excluding time'. SMT understand money not cost of time. Yes OSS will that longer to setup but the purchase cost is £0. Would you prefer is i offered the SIMS.net module at a cost? or offer support contracts?

Hi Jenny, I would like to point out that high tower has successfully be able to achieve real time timetables within moodle for the the total sum of £0 excluding time, with out the need of a SIMS Premier Partner. There is an inherent problem with All SIMS Premier Partners they are bound to use Capita's tools and api which are counter productive, proprietary and force you to base every thing on a Microsoft Platform. We hae been able to implement Sims.net Timetables in Moodle without the need for any additional software paid for software.

An admission number could be used but has limitations, if more that one school were to use a moodle installation you would have duplication of admission numbers. From the guidance notes a UPN can be used by any organisation for educational use. A UPN is unique so it is the best identifier to use to link students across multiple educational systems. If you replace UPN with another unique number you are just replicating a UPN's function of tracking a user. The UPN is deem a general identifier between DCSF and the Information Commissioner but this is not enforced under the Data Protection Act as no general identifier's have been defined. Capita output the UPN on all formatted marksheets, which goes against the above guidelines.