My school system uses two programs for managing grades/classes and such: INOW, a state-mandated, old program that runs on IIS/MS SQL, and Canvas, a pretty good open source learning system hosted by Instructure.
When the school prints report cards, they have to do it via INOW, even though they put in grades via Canvas now. So we need some way to bridge the gap between INOW and Canvas. Exporting stuff from Canvas shouldn’t be a huge issue, it’s importing data into INOW that may be hard since INOW doesn’t seem to have many developer friendly options. I’m thinking the best way is to just edit the SQL database, but I’m relatively new to SQL so I’m looking for advice. What’s the best way to get learned up on basic SQL? And is there any way I can get a graphical view of the database kinda like PHPmyAdmin? I think that will help me with reverse-engineering how INOW stores grades.
One major remark regarding manual changes to database (as opposite to just reading): 1. Make sure there are no other ways - e.g. REST webservices, or any other form of API. 2. If not then, make sure it do not violate the license of modified system. 3. Then if that is allowed, make sure you will not lose support. In most cases when customer starts to modify database content it will not receive any support : you modified it, you broke it, you fix it (or pay extra for our expert to fix it for you). 4. Modifying database directly even if just adding new records (or just editing existing entries) may unexpectedly broke whole application even if it seems that changes are valid. There are some mechanisms that might be involved - e.g. caches, background tasks or data aggregation triggers that will not happen.
Hehe - so turns out it's illegal for us to do this. You're right, it's prohibited in the licensing. The company (Chalkable, formerly STI) actually worked on a contract with the state of Alabama to add this feature...problem is they want $2 per student per year, which is $40,000 per year for our school district. Friggin' highway robbery just to transfer some grades.