Mailinglist Archive: opensuse-edu (156 mails)

["Tim Woodcock" <tim@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Alan,

Thanks for your reply. In answer to your questions:

1. Yes they are separate servers as the school suggested that with the 1:5
student access ratio to be imposed by the government the servers should
handle up to 240 workstations (future proofing their investment). As they
run Linux they still worked out a lot cheaper than RM (used a lot in
Staffordshire). So in answer to your question the proxy is overkill but cost
them only £1800 installed and will last for a long time. It handles up to 14
million objects a day and is good for 1200 concurrent users with a 4Mb
leased line (or whatever). We have developed a lovely administration
interface with rich auditing features. Track thoose violating students live
or access the easy to use reports etc.

2. No I don't think that any Windows software developer likes moving to
Linux (probably because they find it hard to charge money for software).
Pheonix sounds like something we want to develop but with Linux as the
Server OS.

Regards

Tim Woodcock.
Technical Director.
Fisher CAD Services Ltd.

-----Original Message-----
From: Alan Davies [mailto:staff.asd@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: 15 January 2001 11:31
To: suse-linux-uk-schools@xxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [suse-linux-uk-schools] BETT comments


>
> Intro (a bit of background): I am from a company in Staffordshire and we
are
> a (friendly) Linux provider, developer we have installed Linux into Weston
> Road High School, Stafford. We have installed 1 fileserver, 1 Multimedia
and
> 1 powerful Proxy Caching Server. Now that's out of the way......

Are these separate servers?  I found the load on our Netscape Proxy (running
on NT) very low even when its really busy.  Apart from lots of RAM 256MB, a
fast
SCSI system is installed.  Processor load less than 10%, and its not Disk IO
bound.

The result is that we use it as a multimedia (CD) server as well serving CD
images off the
separate IDE bus using two UDMA drives in 'RAID' configuration.



>
> Reason for post: I have spoken to a few people about SIMS and its current
> situation, it seems that nobody is happy with its installation, fragmented
> DOS/ Windows interface and its functionality. I have already had a few
ideas
> for improvement from Weston Road and I was wondering if the lovely people
on
> this mailing list could help answer the following questions.
>
> 1. Would it be a problem to run SIMS through a web browser. Why?
> 2. Using MySQL as the database server.
> 3. Using Linux as the OS.
> 4. How should it be priced (if any).
> 5. Can anyone help with the development (not necessarily programming).
> 6. Which government bodies would be involved.
> 7. Would there need to be a protocol for things like hand held devices,
> laptops to dump marking info, register info etc.
>
> Basically I need as much information as I can get to see if the
development
> of a Linux SIMS package would be a worthwhile venture.

I can't see them rushing to convert to a LINUX  platform.

We didn't like SIMS - and went for something called Phoenix as well- a
company who use
an 'standard' database with a 5GL generated front end.  They have proved to
be very 'flexible'
supplier writing extra bits for us. Although like SIMS its a Windows package
(completely windows - not
just the front end...) we use thin client (CITRIX) to access it from any
stations - Acorn, Linux, and
PC (without installing it on every PC).

Management system thro a browser would seem to the way to go - and could
provide staff access
to data off-site, assuming the security could be be made tight.