ECSA – Elearning Community Service
Architecture
Heiko Bernlöhr
April, 12, 2011
Contents
Chapter 1
Overview
An ECSA is a service architecture for elearning based webservices. It provides
mechanisms for communication and authorization between elearning systems
among each other and management systems. This is implemented via a
MOM.
The ECSA is derived from an architecture style for distributed systems called
REST.
It will put major efforts that only recognized Web standards/protocols and web
components are used, whereby a high degree of compatibility and connectivity is
achieved. See figure 1.1 for ECSA components.
An ECSA builds up of three primary components:
- The ECS (elearning community server) serves the core functionionality
of an ECSA network. It provides named message resources to allow
communication between all participants.
- An ECC (elearning community client) is a participant in an ECSA
network. It has to be registered at ECS and must be able to talk to the
ECS as a REST based client. This participant normally has a native
implementation of the ECS interface. Our favourite ECCs are LMSs
(learning management systems).
- An ECP (elearning community proxy) represents a special kind of
participant. It serves as a proxy for a none ECSA compliant system so
that such a system is able to participate in an ECSA network without
ever knowing about it.
1.1 Sample usage scenario
Suppose you have several LMSs (learning management systems) and want to
share courses between them. You decide not to interchange the real courses but
only course links which consist of some meta data of the appropriate course
especially a link formed by an URL pointing to the real course so you can call it
through the WWW e.g.:
http://ilias.freeit.de/goto.php?target=pg_26_43&client_id=ecs2}
Now it’s possible for each LMS to communicate the released courses by the
resources provided from the ECS to an explicit LMS (point to point) or to a
community of LMSs (point to multipoint).
Because of the uniform application interface – there are only GET, PUT,
DELETE and POST operations – receiving participants can fetch messages
through a GET on the resource URL or sending messages by a POST on the
resource URL (with some additional query parameters or header variables to
point to the appropriate receivers).
To illustrate this we use the simple ECC application curl to send a message from
one participant to another:
curl -i -H ’X-EcsAuthId: pid01’ \
-H ’X-EcsReceiverMemberships: mid02’ \
-H ’Content-Type: application/json’ \
-X POST \
-d ’{
"name": "Mathematics II",
"url" : "http://ilias...?target=pg_26_43&client_id=ecs2",
...
}’ \
http://ecs.freeit.de/campusconnect/courselinks
In order to receive a message (in fifo mode) the receiving participant may
call:
curl -i -H ’X-EcsAuthId: pid02’ \
-H ’Accept: text/plain; application/json’ \
-X GET \
http://ecs.freeit.de/campusconnect/courselinks/fifo
Of course, there are several ways to operate on a resource. For details on using the
resources located on an ECS and the different parameters (http headers, query
strings) please see XXX for details.
Chapter 2
Participants
A particpant represents a legal client in an ECSA
network.
2.1 Basic functionalities and requirements
2.1.1 Technology / Architecture
- has to communicate with the ECS as a REST client.
- HTTP 1.1 as transport and application protocol
- provide persistent connection (keep-alive)
- provide SSL/TLS transport layer
- has to use UTF-8 data encoding
2.1.2 Authentication
2.1.3 Authorization
A client should be able to use a simple ”one touch token” authorization through
the ECS /authtokens ressource. This authorization should be used either in
redirecting users clicking on course links or maybe used in accessing participants
in interconnected ECS networks.
2.1.4 ECS REST interface
2.1.5 Ressource extensions / Alterations
To make resource extensions and alteration possible the clients have to easily
permit
- additional ressources
- extensible data formats
- Postels’s Law (robustness principle):
Be conservative in what you send; be liberal in what you
accept.
- versioning through request and response header (content negotiation)
- Accept: application/vnd.my-format.v1+json
- Accept: application/vnd.my-format.v2+json
2.1.6 Web interfaces
- Interface for ECS configuration data
2.2 Communication procedures / scenarios
In order to take part in an ECSA network a participant has to communicate with
the ECS and other participants in different ways.
2.2.1 Retrieving courselink information
Figure 2.1 on page 19 shows the communication procedure how a LMS retrieve a
courselink:
-
1
- First the LMS fetches (POST) an event message from its event
resource (/events/fifo) of ECS , which gives it a new or updated
course resource meta data URL on ECS. Supposing this would be
/campusconnect/course/5.
-
1.1
- Now the LMS takes this URL and fetch (GET) it from ECS (the LMS
only fetch the message via a GET, so that the message will still be
there). Only now the LMS get the real resource URL to fetch the
desired course data from the proxy. This url maybe itself an encoded
url: https://.../58680c636c8bc4a16e047d758f2e7773118fa141
-
1.2
- Next the LMS fetches (POST) a one touch token from the /auths
resource of ECS in case the proxy use it for authorization against ECS.
-
1.3
- Then the LMS get (GET) the actual course data from the proxy URL
provided by the received message in 1.1 .
-
1.4
- Until it will get back the
course resource representation in 1.3 successfully, it deletes (DELETE)
the message /campusconnect/course/5 received in 1.1 on ECS.
This procedure guranties that the appropriate course data will remain on the
proxy until the LMS has successfully fetched the data, because after the message
/campusconnect/course/5 has been deleted from the LMS the proxy will be
informed from the ECS, so that the real course data could be deleted. Of course
this information occurs only if all addressed participants has successfully fetched
the message on the proxy and if the /campusconnect/course resource is not
tagged as a postrouted resource.
List of Figures
List of Symbols
-
ECC
- elearning community client
-
ECP
- elearning community proxy
-
ECS
- elearning community server
-
ECSA
- elearning community service architecture
-
LMS
- learning management system
-
MOM
- message orientated middleware
-
participant
- a client in ECSA network
Index
ECSA
overview, 2
participant, 5
architecture, 5
authentication, 5
authorization, 6
communication, 6
ressource extensions, 6
retrieving courselink, 7
technology, 5