Research Of Building Modern Distance Education Application Architecture

The knowledge economy that the high-tech is the key will be in dominant status in the new century. Distance education engineering has an important effect on the advancement of social economy in our country, the advent of knowledge economy, and the importance of general national power. Modern distance learning applies the computer and network communications to education. It has gradually become an important carrier for us to take professional training, update our knowledge architecture and study in all our lives.In this article, an infrastructure based on Java 2nd Enterprise Edition (J2EE) four-tier architecture for Modern Distance Education Application Architecture is mainly discussed. The realization of this system is also described with developing supporting platform for distance learning and assistant management platform for teaching and educational administration. In detail, the paper also introduces the utility of Web Service and Middleware in the process of developing. The environment for training software technology is provided in our framework which follows those technology standards for distance learning.First, the paper gives an introduction of its hardware architecture which unites satellite and Internet network, and implement of main hardware functional modules on the basis of hardware design principles. Using video meeting technology based on Internet Protocol (IP) and video casting technology based on Web, the multi teaching modes is implemented by Real-time/Unreal-time, synchronization/asynchronization. Second, the paper makes a thorough analysis of system requirement in distance learning supporting platform based on J2EE. Content Management Middleware (CMM) is used to construct the enterprise distributed applications based on J2EE, and its database structure design is also accomplished. Third, the paper gives system analysis, design and implementation of assistant management platform, its e-commerce mechanism and business logic analysis based on XML, and how to integrate enterprise inner system by Java Message Service (JMS) and XML. On-line registration, payment, purchase for teaching material and courseware resources, distance management for teaching is implemented in this paper by e-commerce, and so distance education materials can be shared in all over the world.Finally, based on the preceding content and two software platforms which author participate in, an optimized, scalable and high performance distributed enterprise application architecture is constructed, and the application is deployed and tested in the last second section of this paper. Main factors and tactics how to optimize system performances is also deeply talked about.