Support
EDSAS and EDLINK
EDSAS is the system that DECD schools use to manage their student data, and this is maintained by a dedicated team within the DECD infrastructure. There is an additional tool written and maintained by DECD called EDLINK that enables schools to get access to the data stored within EDSAS for use with other systems. Periodically DECD release updates to the EDSAS system; when these are installed a side-effect is that it temporarily stops EDLINK from working.
A Brief History
EDSAS was designed many years ago on a database platform called Paradox. As this system is so dated, DECD released an adapter database called EDLINK which connects to the Paradox tables but provides a more modern interface for extracting data out of the Paradox tables. Due to the strict security constaints on EDSAS, EDLINK is written using Microsoft Access 97, a database program that respects the security of the original Paradox database.
The EDLINK-EDSAS linking problem
Periodically DECD make updates to EDSAS to add new functions and queries to the system; these updates are usually rolled out to schools once or twice a year. An unfortunate side-effect of these updates is that it causes the links between EDLINK and EDSAS to break, requiring them to be re-linked before EDLINK can be used. This re-linking must occur after every EDSAS update before EDLINK can be used.
How does this affect Scorelink?
Scorelink makes use of EDLINK2015 to obtain EDSAS data.
When an EDSAS update is released and installed on the Admin network, EDLINK2015 will stop working until it is re-linked back to EDSAS. Until this is done the Extractor will still try and extract data as normal, but the process will fail. This won’t cause any problems, but your school’s student data will remain stagnant in Scorelink until the link is restored.
How do I re-link EDLINK2013?
For in-depth instructions on re-linking EDLINK2015 please see the related user guide EDLINK – Update Links