Upgrade Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

The AVANTE Architecture described in this paper, implements a WBI environment based on CORBA distributed software components for course management, user authentication, collaborative work, database access, presentation, and other services. The AVANTE components conform to a 3-tiered model, with Client, Middleware, and Database Services sublayers. All metadata definitions are described using XML standards for WBI. At the Management layer, component services manipulate JDBC-SQL data from a Low Level Services Layer, and combine it with the corresponding XML DTDs to instantiate course objects as new component services. At the Presentation layer, a filtermapping service transforms XML descriptions by applying several XSLT stylesheets, which are defined for user interaction, interface customization, and remote service administration. The developed WBI tool can be deployed using available free software, and is independent from database platform. Performance and on demand scalability are achieved by adding or removing replicated CORBA components and servers. Further services will be extended to include auditing, dynamic and adaptive interfaces, grading, content development, and integration with existing administrative services