The Architectural Design of an Integrated Virtual Classroom System

This study discusses the architectural design of an integrated system for the delivery of lectures in a virtual environment. The architecture and description of the system components are presented with the techniques and recommendations for the implementation of the designed system. The system architecture is multi-tier, modular, scalable and built for adaptability to database middleware suite. All functionalities within the application are delivered using Web Services, communicate via industry standard XML messaging and access is purely via a web browser. The virtual classroom application utilizes an operating system with facilities for providing users web services, data and pre-processor hypertext with a simple and consistent User Interface corresponding to the tiers. With the object-oriented design method used in this application, three logical categories were identified for application objects, namely, objects that deal with presentation aspects of the application, objects that deal with the business rules and data, and objects that accept and interpret user requests and control the business objects to fulfil these requests.