Building Blocks: Looking Ahead

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Blackboard Building Blocks
Looking Ahead
Dan McFadyen, Tracy Engwirda, Tom Joyce
Saturday, November 14, 2009
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Where Weve Been

• 6th Generation Product
• Niche, small scale app to mission critical,
  enterprise-wide application
• An emerging vision

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Where We Are

• API is stable
• 6.0 is the baseline for development
• Weve seen the problems and know whats important
  moving forward
• Growing developer community
• Just look around
• The vision becomes reality

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Where Were Going

• Infrastructure Updates
• Database support
• Operating system support
• JDK support
• Embedded technologies
• Tomcat upgrade (Servlet 2.3/JSP 1.2)

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Where Were Going
BbPersistenceManager pm BbServiceManager.getPer
sistenceService().getDbPersistenceManager() Con
tentDbLoader contentLoader ContentDbLoader.Defau
lt.getInstance() String contentIdStr
request.getParameter("folderId") Id folderId
pm.generateId( Content.DATA_TYPE, contentIdStr
) Content folder contentLoader.loadById(
folderId )

• Breadth
• Expose more functionality across subsystems
• Depth
• Expose more functionality within subsystems
• Ease of Use
• Simpler, more direct access to functions
• Methods that encapsulate deeper logic

String folderIdStr request.getParameter(
folderId ) Content folder (Content)Id.genera
teId( Content.DATA_TYPE, folderIdStr
).loadObject()
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Where Were Going

• Asynchronous processing
• As B2 tools become ubiquitous, many tasks need to
  become decoupled from user interface events
• E.g., should a user wait for 12 tools to handle a
  grade book event?

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Where Were Going

• Event Infrastructure
• True events that allow extensions to get
  notified of data change events
• User, course, enrollment synchronization
• Data reconciliation
• Course Copy
• Content Copy

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Where Were Going

• Real-time logic extensibility
• Data transformation
• Archive/restore/export/import
• Delegated logic
• Extension decides rendering criteria

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Where Were Going

• Workflow hooks
• A step beyond events
• Extensions can integrate seamlessly into
  administrative workflows
• User creation
• Course creation
• Enrollment
• Synchronous
• Affect transaction outcome

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Where Were Going

• Licensing and Access Control
• Exposure of the Blackboard license API and model
• Extension of the model to support
  extension-provided license criteria
• API to standardize checks

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Heterogeneous Development

• CLR/.NET APIs (server)
• Web Services (server and client)
• Any language that can bind to a Web Service
• Type-safe binding via stubs (generated from WSDL)
• Dynamic binding via standardized APIs (JAX-RPC)
• This is possible today tell us what you want to
  see (or just build it and tell us about it)

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Cartridge Integration

• Better introspection of packages to get custom
  data types
• Workflow to better facilitate getting the right
  extension into the system
• Integrated mechanism to say, Install this
  Building Block now
• but in a way that wont make administrators
  nervous

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Storage Solutions

• Current model requires limiting storage decisions
  to remain portable
• APIs to store arbitrary data in managed locations
  that are honored by import/export
• Potentially opening and/or customizing the schema

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Internationalization

• Phase I Support the data
• Phase II Support localization
• Extensions will require locale matching on
  install
• Phase III Support multiple locales
• Locale matching gets more sophisticated
• API to interact with locales at user and course
  levels

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Building Blocks as Enablers

• Filling in feature gaps
• Architecture changes are expensive features are
  less so
• Can provide adaptor layer for standards support

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Building Blocks and Blackboard

• The new product strategy aims to leverage
  Building Blocks for our own releases
• Smaller, lower risk platform upgrades
• Application Packs
• Deployed via Building Blocks, where possible
• Where its not possible, the platform will be
  enhanced
• More manageable upgrades, both for Blackboard and
  customers

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Building Blocks and Blackboard

• Common functionality and framework across
  products
• Learning System
• Portal System
• Content System
• Knowledge on one will transfer to the others

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Thank You

Demos to Follow gt