nathj

Is there any chance I could get a copy of that code? It could be really helpful with a project I have coming up. Thanks Nathan

Hi there, CMIS does have an API but you have to buy it at a cost of £500 per install that you wish to use it on. Once you have that available to you there are a number of things you can do with it in terms of extracting data and writing certain (limited) data back to the system. There is a support site and reasonable documentation - it's certainly easier than figuring out their crazy database. Cheers Nathan

Hi folks, I'm currently working on a major project to launch Blackboard in our schools. Part of this project involves taking data from CMIS and loading it into Blackboard. There's not actually that much data involved - Students, Staff, Parents, Courses and all the relationships these contain. The tricky part is time table details. I need to be able to produce a simple flat file for the timetable import process in Blackboard and I am planning on using the CMIS API for this. Using the SOAP UI plug-in in Eclipse I can see the methods exist however when I come to writing code to use the API I can't figure out where to get it from. It's a bit of puzzler. I can see that the most suitable approach for me is to get the timetable information for a student or staff member as I get their details. I was wondering if anyone had used this method yet and if they would be kind enough to share some insights with me. Many thanks Nathan

Thanks for the clarification. Support issues should certainly be a consideration. Is the data structure as poor as I've read about with no DD, no normalisation and really poor data integrity?

Why is that your recommendation? If I have a system that enables students/parents to view performance records, grades whatever then it makes sense if the teacher can use the same system to update that information. One system for al the main tasks. If it's done properly I see no reason why this would be an issue - which is why I asked my question at the start of this post. I'm new to this and looking for input, if you have reasons for this - experience etc then please let me know. Many thanks nathj

That's encouraging and pretty much as I expected. I'm sure it's not going to cause me too much bother - once I figure out the data structure. To be honest as MySQL, PHP developer I'm not at all worried about the code I just want some tips on the data structure as I hear it's not normalised and doesn't make any logical sense but as yet I've not seen it. Also, the tools that we are considering for a VLE seem to be able to read from the CMIS system but not write to them - which could result in data duplication and even poorer data integrity. Thanks for the encouraging words though nathj

Hi, I'm new here and very new to CMIS, so allow me to introduce myself. I am a developer by trade who has is currently involved in helping my employer to decide upon a VLE. Currently the options are FROG, in-house or a combination of the two. One part that I am currently considering is the ability to read from our MIS - CMIS. further to this I want to be able to write back to it - it's only SQL database after all. My question is this; does anyone have or know of any documentation on the data structure or have any advice on writing information to the database? All help will be greatly appreciated. Many thanks nathj