matt40k

Throwing another options in the ring - https://mythic-beasts.com. They do a managed WordPress option but you'll be fine with the normal hosting. I have the shell extra then use wp-cli to auto-update. Mythic Beasts take care of the rest of the patching etc.

??? Still don't understand. Every penny central\government is published regularly and information can be requested on demand. It's permanently under scrutiny, as it should be, as it public money! It's been like this for years and years and years.

Sorry, I don't understand, are you suggesting Birmingham City Council (or any other LA for that matter) are breaking the law by miss managing public funds by not following the correct procurement legislation?!?

That's like someone who judge all "other" MIS providers based on his experience with 1 "other" MIS provider. Be interested to see the figures of how many Birmingham schools rebel and pick non-LA options

@Michael I think your knowledge of LA procurement is pretty dated. LA will do nothing more herd the schools into a room whilst they (the school) make the decision (other then providing legal services and subsidizing the schools for the cost involved in making the decision)

Hope so, BETT is an ideal way IMO, you can see a demo and least get a feel for what each system can do and an idea of costs. @Banjo - I doubt you'll get a response. If you were about to buy a SIMS license for £20k, how would you feel if they are dropping it in 7 months?

Seriously @Banjo? Seriously? SIMS8 is SaaS, as in Software as a Service. As in no license to buy, you PAYG. Why do you need to buy a license AND PAYG for the "license"? The only people this makes sense for is Capita as they're getting paid (at least) twice for the same thing. Did you have to buy a hefty Office 365 license AND then pay the subscription? No. Cause no one in their right mind would pay twice! Regarding re-procuring your missing the point. If you've got something and your happy with it, you can go, "Hey, I'm happy, I don't have time to spend trying to find something better." and you just carry on as normal and just renew. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. If something like SIMS7 > 8 the whole thing is different, you can say, hey, I'm happy with SIMS8 because you don't have SIMS8, you have SIMS7. It's like comparing Bromcom to the old SIMS version. You can't do it. Not at least looking at the others is like buying a new car without looking around. Is £50k for a new car a good deal? No? Well how do you know if you haven't looked. The thing that REALLY annoys me isn't the whole throwing money at Capita, its the whole lazy spending of public money then whining that they've got no money.

There is a pretty good guide within SIMS that details it all better then I can. Should be within SIMS .net > Documentation

...but it's SaaS?

Again, this reinforces that SIMS7 > SIMS8 won't be just a update. It's a whole new product.

Its an entirely new product, everything changed. So you can't just renew like we've all been doing for the last 20-30 years. It's clearly not a renewal with an upgrade, its a whole new product!! Its an entirely new product. So you can't just renew.

Can they even legally do that? They've made such as major deal about how SIMS8 is a total re-write and just just a update \ sticky plaster how can you legally do that? Surely its a re-procurement exercise?! Can see a lot of Academies\LAs\Schools getting slapped for breaking procurement law.

Unless your using Windows Auth... ... or you run that stored proc ... and never a bad thing to change your password

Both. Within SIMS .net, system manager, you can link the user to a Windows User. It then automatically passes through the User token to SQL rather then the password.

@TwistedHelixis sims.sims.db_p_transfer first SIMS is the database name, second is the schema, last bit is the object \ stored procedure name. You can also prefix it with a server name (assuming you have linked servers setup) - so SQL format is: Server . Database . Schema . Object Server, database and schema are all option. Schema is required, but it will default to dbo if not present The SIMS database will contain the user names, that stored procedure (db_p_transfer), will transfer the passwords from the MASTER database into the SIMS \ FMS database. It's utterly pointless backing up the systems databases on a SIMS SQL server, if your system databases get corrupt, you have an underlying problem which will most likely result in a reinstall. In terms of the passwords, you really need to use Windows Authentication, SIMS SQL password is only really obscured

Did they check the backups have been working correctly? Next thing to check is why it got corrupted. Check Event Log to see if you have any bad blocks - ie replace the hard drive. If your good, could be the antivirus on-access scanning the .mdf \ .ldf - so might want to check you have an exception. More likely its hardware. Once you've fixed the actual problem, you should get away with installing a new instance (call it sql2014 if it was sims2014 or install sql2014 if you had 2012) - then its just a question of restoring the database and update ini etc

It's what you pay support for

Sure David will point you at them, but SalamanderSoft was adding some support for this scenario.

I'd avoid this. It's just a problem waiting to happen (ie you leave, they update S3, but don't update GPO, yes I know, easy to fix, but its a un-needed pain). If S3 is having trouble deploying a 1 KB file, I'd suggest you'd get the underlying problem fixed.

@OllyM Sounds like you need to check your SOLUS3 config, sounds like the INI files bit isn't setup correctly. Contact your local support team and they'll sort you out.

Pfff... it's Microsoft, they rebrand most things every 6-18 months

Assume you've tried: https://csharpmarc.net/c-marc-editor

...It has an XML option

Appears SalamanderSoft are following Ruler by providing a free SDS tool - Salamander School Data Sync | SalamanderSoft Limited - just another quality free tool from them (Free Utilities | SalamanderSoft Limited)

You might want to look up BI @pcstru, you've just described every BI tool in the last 25 years+. The relational database is going to be complex, especially if you want a speedy system. The whole idea of having a warehouse is to flatten it so it's easier to report on, then you add analysis layer on top so users can interactive with it with low technical knowledge - you'll still need to understand the business speak however!