Moodle Plugins directory: Cohort external database: Comments

Thursday, 7 August 2025, 6:24 AM - Dan Marsden

Wed, 06 Aug 2025 22:24:54 GMT

by Dan Marsden.

@Al - this uses our updated workflows code which will auto-publish to the plugins db when the version.php version is bumped if tests are passing. If this plugin works for you in Moodle 5 feel free to submit a PR that bumps the supported version and the version numbers in teh version.php and if tests pass the plugins db will get updated automatically.

Thursday, 7 August 2025, 4:45 AM - Al Metcalfe

Wed, 06 Aug 2025 20:45:08 GMT

by Al Metcalfe.

Hi
I hope you are well, it's been ages. Cohort ED appears to work on Moodle 5. Could you update the supported extension on your end to Moodle 5 so that it installs automatically each week when we update our Moodle instance? It saves us so much time. Cheers.

Monday, 19 May 2025, 5:53 AM - Al Metcalfe

Sun, 18 May 2025 21:53:05 GMT

by Al Metcalfe.

Hi Dan, sorry to nag, love your plugin, if you could just set the supported version of moodle to 4.5, it would save so much time on update, cheers mate.

Monday, 5 May 2025, 7:10 AM - Al Metcalfe

Sun, 04 May 2025 23:10:36 GMT

by Al Metcalfe.

Hi Dan
Please can you change your supported version to moodle 4.5 or 5 so that when we install moodle each week, it auto installs, this would save a lot of time. Thank you.

Sunday, 23 February 2025, 12:07 AM - Ricardo Caiado

Sat, 22 Feb 2025 16:07:48 GMT

by Ricardo Caiado.

Is there any moodle 4.5+ update?

Friday, 17 March 2023, 4:08 AM - Dan Marsden

Thu, 16 Mar 2023 20:08:56 GMT

by Dan Marsden.

@Simon - nice catch - looks like a sensible change, feel free to submit a pull request so I can merge that into the main branch - thanks!

Thursday, 16 March 2023, 11:07 PM - Simon Lewis

Thu, 16 Mar 2023 15:07:16 GMT

by Simon Lewis.

Hi Dan,
Thanks for a great plugin! We use it a lot.

I've found an issue with PHP 8.0. When running the scheduled task we get the error:
odbc_free_result(): supplied resource is not a valid ODBC result resource
I had the same error with one of our custom plugins, that also uses ODBC, so I managed to fix it I think.
In classes/sync.php I've added $rs->Close(); to line 113, 267, 366. And that seems to fix the task.
I'll look out for how you do it in an updated version, as you might well do it a different, better way (or there may be issues with how I've done it), but thought I'd report it here nonetheless.

thanks a lot,
Simon

Wednesday, 31 August 2022, 6:54 AM - Dan Marsden

Tue, 30 Aug 2022 22:54:55 GMT

by Dan Marsden.

@Koen - I finally got round to adding our github action config to the repo and it's triggered an auto-deploy to the plugins db now - thanks!

Tuesday, 30 August 2022, 2:44 PM - koen roggemans

Tue, 30 Aug 2022 06:44:21 GMT

by koen roggemans.

Hi Dan, Is it possible to push the latest and greatest version of this plugin to the Moodle plugins database. The new cleanup function looks very cool. Thanks!

Tuesday, 17 May 2022, 11:55 PM - Otaku Dude

Tue, 17 May 2022 15:55:04 GMT

by Otaku Dude.

Thank you @Dan, that seems to have produced something more useful - Missing extension for mssql. I will pass that on to our IT dept.

Tuesday, 17 May 2022, 5:15 AM - Dan Marsden

Mon, 16 May 2022 21:15:42 GMT

by Dan Marsden.

Also @Nigel, hit the "Debug ADOdb connection to external database" checkbox on the cohortdatabase settings page too, along with the showcrondebugging setting you might get some other useful output.

Tuesday, 17 May 2022, 5:05 AM - Dan Marsden

Mon, 16 May 2022 21:05:08 GMT

by Dan Marsden.

@Nigel, that simply means that the adodb library in Moodle can't connect to your external db server - lots of different things that could cause this, (wrong password, firewall issue, missing drivers on the web server etc) but turn debugging on in your cron and it might give you more output.

Monday, 16 May 2022, 11:01 PM - Otaku Dude

Mon, 16 May 2022 15:01:59 GMT

by Otaku Dude.

Thank you @Dan, I appreciate your time on this. The only error we see is in task_log table is:
Starting cohort synchronisation...
Error while communicating with external cohort database
I'm not sure when the extra output in the cron task will be?
Thanks, Nigel (Otaku).

Monday, 16 May 2022, 11:30 AM - Dan Marsden

Mon, 16 May 2022 03:30:02 GMT

by Dan Marsden.

@Otaku, Make sure cron is running and check the output of the cohortdatabase task - also try turning on $CFG->showcrondebugging = true; in your config.php to get more output in the cron task.

Friday, 13 May 2022, 6:40 PM - Otaku Dude

Fri, 13 May 2022 10:40:24 GMT

by Otaku Dude.

Hiya @Dan we are now trialing the plugin. We have everything set up correctly I think, but we are not getting any cohorts created. I can ping between servers OK, so connection seems to be fine. We are using mssql and have use sybase quite enabled. I have set it to email admin with errors but I am not receiving anything. Is there any troubleshooting documentation, please.