[schooltool-dev] Data import - my ideas

[Ignas Mikalajunas]

On Tue, Dec 16, 2008 at 03:32, Tom Hoffman <tom.hoffman at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Gregor,
>
> I think the bottom line is that there are at least two ways to
> organize this information.  We're essentially parsing a list of class
> rosters.  You're proposing, essentially, a list of students with a
> list of class assignments.  Neither is inherently better in all cases
> -- primarily it probably depends on how the school comes up with the
> section assignment.

The problem is - ours is better. Reasons:

Current Import and expxrt formats match.
Current format resembles internal data structures enough to be able to
express 100% of possible cases.
You can import/export different parts of the spreadsheet, so you can
import just sections, only part of sections, only persons, or only
timetables...

>
> Having implemented one method, I don't think we're going to take the
> time to implement another right now -- we've got a lot to get done
> before April -- but really it is just a matter of writing some more
> parsing code.  At this point I'm inclined to wait and see if more
> people have the same complaint about the current system.

We can support aditional import formats, but this is not just the
import format, it's export format as well, so you can preserve your
information, back it up or transfer it between schools... And my point
is - it is probably easier for most of the programmers in the world to
transform other formats into the schooltool format, than write a new
import plugin. Plainly because you can pick any programming language
to do it. I mean - I'd bet it's cheaper to hire someone from India,
Germany or on Craiglist to do the transformation of one excel file
into another than hire me to write the import plugin...

Ignas