A number of colleagues on this forum have asked for some background to the development and the ability to write to SIMS from Moodle. Capita SIMS, working with Granada, Reasearch Machines and Microsoft have produced a restricted IMS web services profile. In its current format, the application allows a dynamic link to extract data from SIMS.net to provide both an initial population of another database and also to then provide updated information (SIMS is acting as the IMS Reference Agent). The data includes student, staff, groups and membership.
At this stage we are only including the mandated IMS fields plus those which we required for a specific project. We will continue to work with partners to improve the breadth of data and look to develop SIMS.net also as a Sych Agent. We do however need commercial cases from partners where there is a desire to increase the interoperability by extending the IMS Web Services.
Although the functionality is embedded within the SIMS.net application , users need to apply a "licence script" to make the application active. This "licence script" is non-chargeable but is often controlled by the SIMS Support Teams responsible for the schools MIS system support.
