Blackboard Building Blocks Looking Ahead Thursday, December 03, 2015 Dan McFadyen, Tracy Engwirda, Tom Joyce

Where We’ve Been 6 th Generation Product Niche, small scale app to mission critical, enterprise-wide application An emerging vision…

Where We Are API is “stable” –6.0 is the baseline for development –We’ve seen the problems and know what’s important moving forward Growing developer community –Just look around… The vision becomes reality…

Where We’re Going Infrastructure Updates –Database support –Operating system support –JDK support Embedded technologies –Tomcat upgrade (Servlet 2.3/JSP 1.2)

Where We’re Going 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 BbPersistenceManager pm = BbServiceManager.getPersistenceService().getDbPersistenceManager(); ContentDbLoader contentLoader = ContentDbLoader.Default.getInstance(); String contentIdStr = request.getParameter("folderId"); Id folderId = pm.generateId( Content.DATA_TYPE, contentIdStr ); Content folder = contentLoader.loadById( folderId ); String folderIdStr = request.getParameter( “folderId” ) Content folder = (Content)Id.generateId( Content.DATA_TYPE, folderIdStr ).loadObject();

Where We’re 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?

Where We’re 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

Where We’re Going Real-time logic extensibility –Data transformation Archive/restore/export/import –Delegated logic Extension decides rendering criteria

Where We’re Going Workflow hooks –A step beyond events –Extensions can integrate seamlessly into administrative workflows User creation Course creation Enrollment –Synchronous –Affect transaction outcome

Where We’re 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

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)

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 won’t make administrators nervous

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

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

Building Blocks as Enablers Filling in feature gaps –Architecture changes are expensive; features are less so Can provide adaptor layer for standards support

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 it’s not possible, the platform will be enhanced –More manageable upgrades, both for Blackboard and customers

Building Blocks and Blackboard Common functionality and framework across products –Learning System –Portal System –Content System Knowledge on one will transfer to the others

Thank You Demos to Follow >