Student Administrative Software for Unix?

MISplice asks: "I have been searching for a Linux alternative to SASIxp which is a student administrative databse for K-12 schools (it does grades, schdeuling, and holds demographic and medical data). I have found the OpenSIS project which seems to be on hiatus and never past the implementation stages. Does anyone know of such a product or project that is under development? If not does anyone know if these types of products will work under WINE?" Have there been any new developments in this area since this article from 2000?

Comments

Interesting concept

[user no. 590291]

I don't know if anything exists now, but this is certainly something that could be developed or commissioned by a consortium of K-12 districts. Unlike higher education, K-12 doesn't have competition issues, so a cooperative project for a student administration system could displace closed-source software. The consortium could even generate revenue selling support, perhaps.

Re:Interesting concept

[lal]

I have been working in higher ed (not K-12) application software for > 10 years. Every consortium for administrative software that I have experienced - and there have been several - have been colossal failures. Consortiums are the ultimate design by committee, and DBC is the worst way to design software.

I'd love to see some open source limited market application software projects. There aren't many, for this reason: This type of application software needs domain experts and programmers. Ideally, if the domain expert is also a programmer, you'll get the best software. A talented programmer who is also a domain expert and wants to build open source software is a rare bird indeed. Add to that the immense commitment required for all but the simplest application programs, and you see why limited market application programs are not open source.

Re:Interesting concept

[aminorex]

What K12 needs is zero-administration. That means
support staff and a recurring service charge.
I tried to sell such a project (open source scheduling/
grading) to the local public school service co-op,
but they wouldn't fund it. I went to the Minnesota
department of childhood families and learning, and
they *loved* my demo and prototype, which included
9 man-months of effort invested in collecting the
local and state-wide graduation standards to allow
students to see what they needed and how they were
progressing towards graduation while they selected
their classes, but they weren't interested in
funding it either.

Really, this is a gold-mine opportunity for an ASP
start-up. I've got the experience and even a lot of
the code and data to do it, but I don't have the bizdev acumen to make this fly. If you're an angel
investor tired of dot-com flim-flam and want to
do something that really helps people as well as
making money hand-over-fist, give me a buzz.

Bessie the Annhilator

[MJArrison]

Check out Bessie the Annhilator. It does a great job at grading even if it doesn't do the rest of what you asked. It's written in php and is very extensible.

Colleges

[Apreche]

Check out colleges and see what they use. I go to RIT http://www.rit.edu we have SIS that students use to get all their info about schedules, grades, etc. And it also allows all the faculty to grade us. Just about every university has some sort of electronic SIS nowadays. Try e-mailing a few IT departments and ask them what they use.

Re:Colleges

[TedCheshireAcad]

SIS is a hack of shit. Want to register for your classes? Forget it, system is full. Better off going to someone in the department with STARS access and getting them to register for you. That's what I did. Stupid ITS, they have their heads up their asses.

Re:i recommend Linux

[Jahf]

Umm, they already know they want Linux for the OS . They're hoping to now find an =application=. I would presume that if they have to take the time to reinvent it themselves, and they already have a working version on Windows, it may not be something that they have time to work on.

If it doesn't have to be open source...

[RobTerrell]

If you don't absolutely need open source, you could look into PowerSchool (http://www.apple.com/education/powerschool/). It's got scheduling, reports, transcripts, report cards, etc. Runs on Unix or Windows servers. I remember reading that the guy who used to head up Apple's OS 9.1 development moved over to the PowerSchool team.

Just build it yourself.

[BoomerSooner]

In the amount of time it's taken you to research the project you probably could have built one.

Re:Just build it yourself.

[stevenbdjr]

In the amount of time it's taken you to research the project you probably could have built one.

Obviously, you've never used a product like SASIxp, or worked in a K-12 school district for that matter. These are incredibly complex packages that handle everything from student records to financial records. In addition, they store the kind of information that allows state and federal mandated reports to be generated, and can generate those reports in the exact manner required.

You're also assuming that the poster is a developer, or has such skills.

I have looked into this...

[DarkBlack]

I think that a lot of people don't realize how comprehensive this product has to be to replace a piece of software as complex as SASIxp.

If you can find several developers that understand what School Administrators need and enjoy hacking on this kind of software for free in their spare time, I would love to meet them. I would love to contribute to such a project but after following the OpenSIS devel lists for a while, it became inrcreasingly clear that the requirements are huge for such software. It requires people with a lot of intimate knowledge of state reporting requirements for each individual state, intelligent scheduling functions, information security, and still be simple to use.

I dislike the pricing, support costs, and vendor lock, and bugs of SASIxp, but it really is not a trivial task to replace this software with an free software alternative.

A little More information

[MISplice]

For those of you not familiar with SASIxp or other Student systems it would be a monumental undertaking.. for instance.. SASIxp has been around since the early 80's in a DOS based version and has matured from there. It has over 175 different databases, not to mention that most major files(grading, demographics, courses.. which each section can have 10 + databases associated with them) have 30+ fields each (in DB4 most of which can be transfered to SQL with an executable they provide) and multiple sub routines that allow data to be transfered between school years at the click of a button. I personally have been working alone in trying to create a similar system Using an SQL database with PHP as the interface.. I know nothing about PHP and am still trying to think of all the tables and logical keys to link everything together. Everything I have is basically on paper and will stay that way until I can get the database design the way it should be... So for those that say build it yourself.. I am trying but it is a grave undertaking just to make sure you have the majority of the Fields needed by schools. I would gladly collaborate with others to restart something Similar to OpenSIS just to get a basic foundation I don't even care about reporting yet I would just like a nice Database with a friendly UI to get the data and print it 1 page at a tiem.. from there I can worry about reports.