Batching or real time data sharing with Moodle?

Batching or real time data sharing with Moodle?

by Rob Boetto -
Number of replies: 6

I was wondering if most installations of Moodle share data in real time or Batch at night with their Student Information Systems (SIS)?

The University where I work uses Banner 5 (upgrading to 7 late next year) and we currently intregate all administrative systems in real time.  So, for example, a student enrolls - update banner, then their e-mail account is created, they are added to relevant forums, access is given for dial in access etc - all this happens in real time and the oracle database is updated accordingly.

We are looking into Moodle (as well as Sakai) and I would be interested in other peoples experiences integrating Moodle with their SIS in real time.

Thanks in anticipation of your responses.

rob

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In reply to Rob Boetto

Re: Batching or real time data sharing with Moodle?

by Michael Penney -
At Humboldt State University, Banner is integrated for authentication, course set-up/teacher assignment, and enrollment. We push student and enrollment data from Banner 6 to our LDAP directory server, which then is read by Moodle's LDAP enrollment and authentication plug-ins. This is all automated in real time at this point.

Students are automatically synced with Banner when they login, and password changes are also updated immediately (we do a cron to update the participants list so teachers can email students who have never logged in). The LDAP server is a cluster of RHEL servers behind a load balancer, also used by our computer labs and library systems. We use PL/SQL scripts written by our Banner admin, Peter Johnson, to push the data from Banner as it is updated.

We next face the challenge of making all this work with Peoplesoft student, which the Cal State system is implementing as the main ERP/SIS system. Hopefully the support for IMS Enterprise in Moodle 1.6 and Peoplesoft will make this transition painlesssmile.
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In reply to Michael Penney

Re: Batching or real time data sharing with Moodle?

by Dirk Herr-Hoyman -
I can report that Oracle (and therefore PeopleSoft) has once again joined IMS.
Back at the beginning of IMS time, Geoff Collier/Peoplesoft, chaired the IMS
Enterprise working group. And there's code that ships with PS SA that generates
Enterprise 1.01.

There is a renewed interest in the IMS Enterprise Services within IMS. This is a big
"to do" for the coming year in IMS. Anyone
who has an existing relationship with Peoplesoft SA should tell there account
rep that it would be a Good Thing for Oracle to lead the way. This would
also fit nicely with Oracle Fusion, which is to be the next gen architecture
for PS SA, Fusion being one of these Enterprise Service Bus beasties.

Linda Feng/Oracle and Mark Crase/Cal State are co-chairs of the IMS Technical Advisory Board. Michael, I'm sure you'll let Mark know of your interest, if
you haven't already smile
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In reply to Dirk Herr-Hoyman

Re: Batching or real time data sharing with Moodle?

by Michael Feldstein -
Since Dirk posted last July, Linda has become the co-chair of the Enterprise V2 specification committee. Oracle intends to be a leader in implementing Enterprise V2 (through Peoplesoft), and Linda is doing her best to help ensure that the standard is robust enough that we won't have any more out-of-band agreements breaking plug-and-play compatibility.
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In reply to Michael Penney

Re: Batching or real time data sharing with Moodle?

by Camilo Rivera -
Hello Michael Penney,

I was wondering if you guys integrated Moodle and Peoplesoft.

I really appreciate any comments regarding this implementation, mainly if you used scripts like in banner or developed any special interface for the integration.

Thanks
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In reply to Rob Boetto

Re: Batching or real time data sharing with Moodle?

by Martín Langhoff -

We run several large SIS-Moodle implementations all using batch updates with either LDAP or DB plugins. Works great, and if you wriute your batch scripts carefully to ensure they fail safely, it is very reliable.

Doing real time updates to moodle means

  • Changing your SIS to trigger updates to Moodle (easier if you have built-in hooks).
  • Ensuring that SIS has enough info to update Moodle consistently at every point.
  • Handling the scenario of Moodle (or the connection between both) being down or broken. If Banner has good hooks, what are the provisions for error handling, message queueing, etc?
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In reply to Martín Langhoff

Re: Batching or real time data sharing with Moodle?

by Rob Boetto -

Thanks Michael and Martin for your quick replies!  I'll take this all on board.

rob

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