jonesieboy

Will do - you know Ruby on Rails already? Awesome Can't wait to get going with this when I get back in a week's time. Robert

Ahh..not really :oops: I have become so resigned to doing this on my own that I haven't written up this kind of stuff. But now that I have the chance of some help, I make this a top priority. Maybe a fortnight to come up with a to-do list longer than your arm I'd like to reassure you that FreeMIS is not the kind of Spaghetti Code nightmare that you might imagine from a one-man project. Ruby on Rails enforces strict separation of database, business logic and presentation layers, and comes with an integrated testing suite. Thanks for the offer of help, BTW

Hi there - I have been persuaded Timing is not great, as I am about to go away for a week's outdoor ed with a bunch of 14yr olds. Briefly - thanks for the invite! Yes, I agree that FreeMIS cannot possibly compete with SIMS yet. My intention with FreeMIS was to set up an Open Source project, get the ball rolling then sit back as hordes of developers piled in to do all the work for me. Alas, I'm still waiting, 2 years later, for anyone to help me code FreeMIS. I never imagined that I would even be able to get as far as I have without help. East Lothian funding is still "under discussion" I'm afraid. I'm optimistic, but the education budget is in tatters this year. Nothing that SIMS does is rocket science. Collating data and exporting it in a specified format is not hard. It's just that SIMS does a LOT of things. If FreeMIS is going to be successful, then it needs to harness the power of Open Source. many hands make light work etc. I was close to joining the SchoolTool team a year ago, but I got cold feet when I looked at their source code. Zope is pretty heavy stuff, and they seem to be making very slow progress given the number of professional developers they are paying. FreeMIS looks like SchoolTool because I nicked their css! (with Tom Hoffman's blessing!) Robert Jones