From W

A meeting was held this week with Ged Lerpiniere of LEAPS. Functionality to edit student records and to provide interview data was checked over. Development was agreed to be going as planned.

Work will continue, and a suitable hosting site for the service will be found next week, with the aim of having a service ready by 16th August 2010 to test with a group specified by LEAPS.

In terms of reporting functionality, I will develop some options for consideration by LEAPS staff, to decide which will be of benefit. I intend to develop methods to export records to PDF and to bulk export records to csv, xml and json.

Functionality to update records offline remains in progress. It is not easy for LEAPS to define what systems would be available in such a situation, as it depends on future funding and investment. Options for developing this will tie in with functionality to bulk upload data though - which can be developed in line with bulk download - so I will examine what generic solutions may be possible.

If a file containing interview data can be uploaded to the system, then it should be possible to generate such a file by multiple generic means. For example, a program to run on a local laptop could output a file of suitable format, although this depends on pre-installation of such a program. Also, as it may be known in advance if internet connectivity is available, it would be difficult to ensure that a local program could contain up to date records. A suitable alternative may be to offer the ability to download read-only copies of a student record, and to offer a method for updating only a suitably formatted interview file.