matt40k

Whilst your at it, you might as well turn the Windows Firewall off and change your local administrator password to "Password1"

I assume it isn't just attendance data you've lost? Attendance data wise, you can enter it on bulk, missing marks(?), I'd prob just set everyone as present then go back and correct the absences doing a week at a time, only worry about AM/PM as that's the legal requirement. The priority will be LAC (Looked After Children). It's prob cheaper to hire a temp for a week or so. Speak with your local primary schools, you might find some of the office staff are happy to do a little bit of extra work over the holidays for a bit of extra cash. It's going to be cheaper then paying developer or trying to bosh a CTF that you can import. However the first step will be to ensure you have a proper backup in place and that you've learnt your lesson - ie if your RAID controller failed, that you've actually replaced it and confirmed its working 100%, same with your backups, if they've failed, make sure your 100% sure your backups actually work, otherwise you'll waste lots of time, money and effort only for the same thing to reoccur.

Yer, you're hitting that point we made where we said about getting your LA \ third party to do the move for you. Without remoting in you're gonna end up wasting a lot more time. Remember, your time isn't free.

sims.sims.db_p_transfer_login {DB}.{SCHEMA}.{OBJECT} You've cut off the schema, check you've connected to the correct database as well

I could point out I said LA, not Capita You've just demo'd the large corporation problem, it can be hit or miss with the quality of engineer you get. Ideally you want to have a named person and a conversion with them prior to the visit so you'll have a good idea of how knowledgeable they are (bonus points if they appear on EduGeek) and they should be the person who was giving you free advice when you were looking at spec'ing the hardware. Nothing worse then turning up and finding the school has purchased a server with a single slow sata drive and they also have Exchange running on it.

@timbo343, if you've spend the weekend trying to get it to work (sounds like you've missed the firewall), you could of saved yourself a lot of hassle and just paid someone to do it for you. It should only take only a few hours, any more and you've got a problem. Most of the technicians I've spoken with over the years always say they can't afford it, yet when you speak with the business manager\bursar, they are quite happy to fund a few hundred pounds to get a external company in to complete the move - its a one time per 3-5 year cost. It's very rare you have to point out the fact that their £30k investment in a MIS system could be undermined by a minor cost saving. You sound like my old manager, he thought a receptionist could install a domain controller. There is a big different between following instructions and understanding them. One fails over at every. single. minor. problem, the other just works.

@timbo343 no problem going from SQL 2008 to SQL 2014. To be honest, you're better off throwing a few hundred pound at your LA\a third party to move it. Save you weeks of hassle, not only can they move SIMS, Discover, FMS if you use it, they can setup SOLUS3, they can check you have valid backup method, make sure the b2b link with the LA is working so you don't stop meeting your legal requirements, help move across any third party apps and remove old legacy things. The training course for actually doing the move SIMS is a day course, trying to compress the information into a static document is foolish and to be honest, if you're only doing it for your school, it isn't worth going on the course. If you're making a few schools its worth doing, might be worth booking a trainer for the next ANME meeting maybe?

Why would you waste resources fixing an issue you've already fix however? We know it works on S3 SIMSPERM64? Seriously? That's a thing? A more helpful response, have you thought about creating a AD group called "local admin rights" then adding it to the clients administrators group?

Yup. It's because Exams (and other legacy apps) need to register COM components, which means they need access to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\TypeLib. So you've basically got to give your Exams officer local admin rights or use SOLUS3. I won't say what I'd do, because your LA will prob come and lynch me and I'm starting to sound like a broken record but that IS the fix. Give your Exams officer local admin rights or use SOLUS3.

How do you mean improve? You'll always have multiple databases with SIMS and the duplication with the setup\maintenance. They have a bolt-on to give you some kind of BI style overview of your finances across multiple FMS databases. I believe the teacher app works across SIMS databases (or it was at least talked about). If you want to get real insight, you'll want a data warehouse or a cloud based MIS that deals with MAT correctly. I personally believe if you have a larger honest user base you can make better choices, how many schools are thinking about 1:1 tablet schemes or just switching to 2 week timetable cycles? How much of that is just give it a go and see how it goes? Yet, no of this anything new. It's hard enough to get schools within a LA to share attendance data with the LA, it isn't about blame, its about how can you improve - is your attendance low in the winter month because of poor weather? Well what about running a bus service for those few weeks\months. Still you can't built a proposal if you don't give the data to the folks who manage the transport. Bah, I digress. Have a word with Joshua @ Ark, they're light years ahead of most schools and their results reflect that. I think he's @bringmoredata on here\twitter, he might have something that he can sell\give\inspire you with.

@PhilNeal you need to poke @kennysarmy LA into rolling out SOLUS3. His still in the dark ages

SIMS updates at least 3 times a year, I'd rather not have to update the image 3 times a year or give users elevated rights. Still I don't know why you'd want include software in an image, surely folks are just installing the OS and drivers these days then deploying software. Haven't heard of folks cloning an image like that since the days of Windows XP.

School boy error!! You never give the missus anything that beta, pre-release or brand new, you always, ALWAYS, wait till at least the first service pack appears. Last thing you want is to come home from work and have her moaning at you for breaking her machine. It's a sure way to guarantee you skipping a release\version.

Yer, can see why a school that changed their MIS away from SIMS wouldn't want to be forced to install SOLUS3.

...another for the folks who pick up the bill

That's a false sense of security, also it adds a man-in-the-middle attack, WinKey + L is a better option. SQL logins are always going to be a lot less secure then AD auth. Personally, AD is authentication, SQL is a relational database, let the authentication server handle the authentication and the database handle to the data. Don't try and make something into something it isn't.

@GREED Shh you, go stand in the corner for trying to insight a riot.

What MIS are you using? He prob sync from it - Richard isn't very good at keeping his site up2date with the new features, he's too busy adding features

Use Windows authentication.

List price is: https://www.digitalmarketplace.service.gov.uk/service/5-g2-0472-001 - worth checking with LA, they might resell it at a reduced cost. Before you say you can't afford it, look at Capita day rate for trying to fix a corrupt DB, then add the cost of data re-entry then add the hassle. Pretty sure any cost 'savings' over 3 years will be washed away.

Looks like the LA in question has a on-prem solution, going by what the IP resolves to. I'd assume they have it pen tested, the only odd thing is that it doesn't appear to be purchased off the government marketplace, which is odd, I mean, if you have to meet gov security regs, surely you'd pick from the list of already approved suppliers. Still, without knowing the intermit details its hard to really tell, but in terms of security, if it was insecure, they wouldn't have a gov connection, which I can imagine wouldn't make running a LA very easy.

Guess he didn't read the release notes first

It could be setup to use your LA central database, which case, give them a call

In terms of hosted SIMS, speak with Cambs LA, found them to be very helpful. Is this the first major thing to be hosted in the cloud? If so, setup a load of test environments and destroy them until you're happy you can automate it all, it'll make spinning up dev \ uat environments when it comes to upgrading to SQL 2016 easier. Also think about how you're going to get the databases, docstorage etc onto the hosted environment, Redstor\Attix 5 might be an option, AnyComms+ might be another. You'll need to also think about cleaning up the user accounts - ideally switch to windows auth, maybe bundle it with office 365. Don't forget to test third party apps and have a list of which ones you can support. Final thing, do a test upgrade before you go into production.

You referring to what you meant? Yer, I was trying to avoid the comparison to death and taxes when it comes to SIMS, really it comes down to best product winning out really. Or you referring the few people who have left ScholarPack? Ie the high school they kicked out when they switched the business model and focused on primary schools. Or the SIMS bloat? Cause even with SOLUS3 automating everything techy there is a still a lot of faff that could be avoided.