Download or read book Loosely-Tied Distributed Architecture for Highly Scalable E-Learning System written by Gierlowski and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this article we described a dedicated knowledge assessment system, designed to supplement existing e-learning solutions, as they implement such functionality in inadequate manner. The design of our system includes a number of original solutions and often exceeds similar products in terms of functionality. Our system relies heavily on webbased technologies (Java, XML, HTML, standardized media files, streaming media, SOAP, SMTP, MIME, etc.), but their usage differs from currently popular trends. The uniqueness of our e-learning solution lies in use of independent modules, full-client approach, loosely-tied distributed architecture and inclusion of ComAL functionality. As a result we have a system which can be deployed fully or partially and easily integrated with third party solutions. Possible deployment scenarios range from a single workstation with knowledge testing module exporting results to MS Excel, to a collection of interconnected servers (each controlling a large number of knowledge-testing client modules) allowing global information searches. The system has proven to be extremely scalable. Complication of system configuration also scales, which means that simple setups are as easy to prepare and maintain as installing and running a standalone application, while only more advanced require additional system configuration and administration. Distributed server part configuration is also easy due to automatic information routing mechanisms. System servers function independently and can be connected and disconnected from the system almost at will with no impairment of their basic functionality, apart from global search ability. That independence allows various departments of an organization to autonomously organize their own elements of the system and retain access to full system information base.