Hi,
We have taken the decision to move from SIMS to ISAMS. I won't go into the reasoning here (wouldn't want to start a debate!), but I was wondering if anyone can offer any advice.
We have the SQL scripts provided by ISAMS that can be run on the system to extract the bulk of the student and staff data and this works (moderately) well, but this doesn't account for anywhere near all the data in the system. File paths to linked documents, SEN, medical, behaviour and achievement, previous schools etc all awol.
Can anyone advise me on the best way to get this data out (bearing in mind that this has to be done twice in the transition process so it has to be repeatable - A single bulk export/import at the start, followed by an update export/import just before going live).
Did anyone do this by modifying the SQL scripts or through generating reports? SQL scripts are fine, but without a database schema to review it's hard to know which information is stored in which field. Which is the best way to do it? SQL or Reports? Or a combination of both?
If anyone has any modified SQL scripts that I could take a look at that do more than the ones provided by ISAMS that would really help.
Alternatively I saw in a previous thread someone who offers data extraction services, but I can't find the thread. I'd throw money at this problem if I knew it was going to get done properly.
Any help would be very much appreciated.