With businesses focusing on delivering increasingly specific information management tools and compliance online for use across Schools, Further Education and Universities, a micro service approach is becoming more prominent.
The stumbling block within most educational institutions is the question of integration with such a product. Most SaaS platforms are bundled with some form of API but these can vary from mature, well documented to the “start-up” and minimal (enough to get your data on our platform!).
When it comes to consuming an API in an educational institution; there are usually the following options discussed:
Powershell – a basic starting point and can handle SOAP and REST API calls but coding a robust solution that can provide error and response handling gets complex quickly. Add in to that any PS script is acting essentially as middleware so you have double the complexity of consuming / integrating with both the API and internal resources (typically Microsoft SQL server).
SQL OLE Automation – still basic but sometimes a preference over Powershell when wanting to work closer with the data and harness the power of SQL directly into the information flow. It usually dictates a reasonable amount of work to support error and response handling and is not usually recommended due to increasing the surface attack and subsequently increasing the security risk.
Third party applications…
Codeless Platform’s BPA – our go to for majority of Microsoft clients. Works like a dream alongside Microsoft SQL (but not limited to this this) and this platform includes its own schedule manager to set and forget your business process tasks.
“Consume from an API, convert into SQL row set and push that into a stored procedure in a local database”
The canvas planner allows you to curate a flow like that with ease.
Add to that, the fact that you can run and manage the first two options from the BPA platform consuming and providing decision-based workflow from their interaction and output to HTML email or visual reporting makes for a powerful and flexible Management Information tool.
Want to find out more, or discuss some simple demonstrations please get in touch.