Modernization of e-learning platforms towards a service-oriented architecture

Abstract

An e-learning platform according to the point of view of service-oriented architecture (SOA,) is considered as a set of services that cooperate with each other to provide a set of functionalities to the actors of the platform. Once, one or several functionalities are exposed as a service, they become ready to be used locally and reused by other external learning platforms. Such an approach would save a lot of effort, cost and implementation time. Our objective through this work is to modernize e-learning platforms that are developed in technologies that are becoming increasingly obsolete (legacy system) through a new technology (SOA) that enables continuous and progressive evolution. To achieve this, we conducted an analysis phase of the various existing e-learning platforms. This allowed us to identify and bring out a set of services that could be shared and reused by e-learning systems. In order to provide quality services, we have conducted our identification process in such a way as to meet the essential criteria of the SOA, namely: autonomy, statelessness, loose coupling with external parties and strong internal cohesion. An experimental phase allowed us to test web services that have been implemented with different programming languages and hosted in different servers. Test results have enabled us to validate our approach and our choices.