Re: [Sheflug] Can open office help?

[david <david.willington@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear All> 
> > Well, if there's no temporary file, something very odd is going on. It
> > could be Excel is sourcing the information directly from SIMS - which
> > would be interesting - or that SIMS is essentially pasting the
> > information into Excel.
> > 
> > I think you need to try harder to find where the data is coming from :)
Will get onto this. I think the network manager was probably looking for
an excel or csv file
> > The "worst case scenario" is that SIMS actually loads up the Excel
> > application, and pushes the data into it: it sounds like a lot of effort
> > and I don't see why they would have done that, but it's possible.
I can't see any obvious reason for them not offering csv as an export as
the previous version did, but there you go.
> > I would try opening up the data in Excel again, and try to look in the
> > Excel information dialogs to see where Excel thinks the data is coming
> > from.
Will do
> > Obviously, if they're doing it via the Office APIs and pushing data into
> > it, you're likely stuffed - you'd have to write an automatic Office
> > macro or something to get the data out again
> If it is being loaded into an Excel worksheet can that not be written
> out to a csv file ? And then couldn't that be automated via a macro?
> Long time since I used Excel.
Yes - but office 2003 is only going to be on 3 computers. We could do with a solution that everyone can have

> If I'm understanding the data flow correctly it comes out of SIMS and
> into Excel with a csv file written out along the way.  Lack of upgrade
> appears to mean you've lost the csv part of that operation and that is
> what's causing problems.
Not quite - SIMS used to export to csv (or excel). The latest version
only exports to excel 2003 which the school can't afford. Upgrading SIMS
wasn't optional.

> 
> As Alex said there's probably a temporary file coming out somewhere but
> it might not be a temporary Excel file so the extension may be
> different.  Have a good look on that drive for files about the data and
> time you expect the data to appear or have appeared.
> 
> The only way you can replace the whole thing with OO stuff is to ask for
> the data to be output from SIMS in a format that Calc can pick up - Calc
> being the OO equivalent of Excel.  csv being the universal answer.
> 
> Seems to me they are tying school's data in unless they pay more money.
>  No open source equivalent to SIMS is there?
I'm looking at the moment. Freemis (http://www.freemis.net/) is making a
start I think but I've not had a play yet. It's unlikely to offer all
the functionality of SIMS at the moment and persuading a school to move
wouldn't be easy. At the moment there seems to be an opportunity to
demonstrate OO if it can offer a solution to this (fairly major)
headache.

Thanks for the pointers - I'm feeling moderately optimistic!

David

> Regards
> 
> Lesley
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
>         Sheffield Linux User's Group
>   http://wwww.sheflug.org.uk/mailfaq.html
>  GNU - The choice of a complete generation


_______________________________________________
        Sheffield Linux User's Group
  http://wwww.sheflug.org.uk/mailfaq.html
 GNU - The choice of a complete generation