Scalability
blackboard > about blackboard > blackboard vs. webct > scalabilty
For greater reliability, the courseware should be spread over multiple servers rather than on a single, high-functioning server.
Need to have 24 hours a day, 7 days a week availability of service.
By September, the number of students on the class server should be between 2500 and 3000; the number of courses should be more than 20 and less than 100.
WebCT
- It is not a "stateless" application
- Could mirror the whole class server on a second server
- Could have multiple application servers
- Multiple Perl processes slow down the server at present; should be fixed in the next release
Blackboard
- Seems to be more scalable if Oracle can be used as Blackboard indicates
- Blackboard has not dealt with a project of this magnitude (in numbers of both students and courses); it is untested
Conclusions
The primary focus of this discussion was how scalability affected reliability.
The ability of a product to support a system spread out over multiple servers
was the main consideration. WebCT currently does not function well across multiple
machines due to its authentication process. They said that they would not be
able to address the multiple server issue until October. Blackboard seems to
be able to handle a wide server architecture, but this has yet to be proven.
It is known that WebCT has supported large student and class loads; it is not
known about Blackboard.
Outcome: Blackboard wins, contingent upon the product working as promised.
Support materials for Bb 9 are available at:
https://wikis.utexas.edu/display/bbsupport/
Blackboard is a campus-wide initiative of:
comments about the site to: Malaika Boyd: mboyd@mail.utexas.edu.
