Docent LMS is a project designed with the aim of creating an e-learning web-based platform (based on open-source technologies) able to:
- handle high users loads, over 1000 simultaneous users connected
- provide high performance in delivering audio/video educational contents
- meet the specifications of SCORM standard
- be based on clustering technologies, to ensure scalability and high availability
- give priority to factors such as security and stability
The project comes from an experience of over 6 years, made by the development team of Intertech Consulting (a firm specializing in open-source technologies) which was commissioned, in 2003, to implement an e-learning platform for training in banking/credit market that would meet stringent specifications for performance and reliability.
After a due diligence on open-source codes, to consider as basics for building a customized solution able to meets all project needs, we selected an application called, at that time, Spaghetti Learning. The development road-map our project went through, could be shortly summarized in
- design an architecture able to grant:
- scalability
- load balancing
- high availability
- to assess and optimize database schema to improve its performance
- building indexes (the original DB was not indexed)
- data replication, addressing all statistic and monitoring reports (which are the most heavy queries) to a dedicate DB clone
- add new modules and features:
- moving the video contents delivery system from progressive-download to streaming (using cloud computing solution)
- unique serial-number per certificate released at the end of learning programs
- other improvements
- several statistical reports to monitor users activities and platform load average
- several sorting features implemented in table view
