SIMS.net bug #8476A75E256
Written on March 20, 2007 – 7:50 pm | by Sahmeepee
Sometimes getting SIMS.net to run smoothly seems like an impossible task. It’s something like painting the Forth Bridge only when you get to the end, you not only have to start again, but also you realise they’ve replaced the damn bridge with 6 different bridges. Paint-resistant bridges. And it’s raining… H2SO4.
Take for example the last few updates (Feb, Feb re-release and March). Like good little soldiers we upgraded one evening soon after February came out. Unfortunately it completely stomped all over our ability to add new teaching staff thanks to a bug which Capita themselves took quite a few weeks to really get a handle on. It also made three commonly-used menu options crash SIMS.net completely. We were told that a patch was being prepared but it would be unlikely to be finished until the March release, so Capita advised us to restore our SIMS server from backup tapes. Ahem…
I’m sure you can imagine the look of glee on the faces of our administrative staff as we told them we were giving them the opportunity to repeat all the work they’d done in SIMS/SIMS.net since we applied the February update several days earlier! Hmm. So that evening we restored from a backup taken before the update and for reasons unfathomable to me (possibly workstation-end) it somehow managed not to fix the problem. Luckily Capita then chose to release a patch to fix the problem. After waiting for everyone to get out of SIMS that night I found that it wasn’t created for our version of the database (we hadn’t been issued the Feb re-release). A call to Capita next morning lead to the re-release and patch being made available via SOLUS. Patch applied that evening. Didn’t fix anything. Oh well, there’s always the March update…
So a couple of days later the March update arrives. Much fanfare. That goes on quite smoothly (they’ve broken SOLUS in a couple of places but it’s nothing too tragic) and it’s all installed before the caretakers start jangling their keys at me. Unfortunately it’s not made a jot of difference to the problems that are now plaguing three of our most active SIMS users.
So now we are at the stage of requiring a site-specific fix, which means uploading our 1.2GB (zipped) database at ~50KB/s over what appears to be the only cobbled section of the information superhighway. Currently 15 failed upload attempts down and I’m starting to lose the will to live. Tomorrow morning I will probably give in and send it by DVD.
To give Capita credit where it’s due, their support people seem intelligent, responsive and genuinely keen to fix problems. It’s just a shame that they seem to have too many bug creators (programmers) for their team of bug spotters (testers).
4 Responses to “SIMS.net bug #8476A75E256”
Just added the Feb update yesterday… ours are delayed it seems by the local support team.
Anyway… the instructions we received warned that it may take up to 30mins to apply the update. I don’t think that I should repeat the word I would use to describe this estimate!
I began the upgrade at 15.50 and got fed up at 17.00 when the SQL batch scripts were half way!!! I had to remote in to check that it had worked!!!!!!
Stupid SIMS.
In somerset the releases are fed to us after supposed testing by the LEA sims team. I also have the server set to automatically download and install the updates - so no hassle for me (until the staff log in the next morning that is!)
The only manual updates we have to do are for things like FMS6 which aren’t covered by the automatic script. However, the changes to the SOLUS system that were applied recently seem like they are leading to the ability to handle these issues automatically also - which will be wonderful.
I still love the look on the staff’s faces when when I hand them the release notes listing the changes. Suprisingly, they aren’t too happy when there are 13 pages of changes to figure out.
We cut out any confusion with those release notes by not giving them out. I’ll have a quick look through and see if there’s anything big in there to pass on by email, but I think they generally do more harm than good.
I’m quite glad we’re supported directly by Capita (although our LEA’s support team are pretty good) because I’m a bit of a control freak, but wherever possible we still avoid applying the new releases for at least a week and keep an eye on Capita’s SupportNet forums for problems.
I did consider running that commandline version of SOLUS as a scheduled job, but it seems to go wrong so many times I wouldn’t want to trust it and get in at 08:30 to the sound of screaming teachers ;)
Just don’t install the upgrades, there is no point. We only install the main releases, or every 3 months.
Capita break to many things.