Using a sample application is going to spice up the SaaS Developer Guide blogposts. It is going to help in explaining deep technical concepts in an easy understandable way. A picture is worth thousand words. Similarly a sample app is worth ten thousand words. So this is the sample application that will be used by all SaaS Developer Guide blog posts.
Cloud Learner Business Architecture
Cloud Learner is a cloud based distant educational system. It allows lecturers to offer online courses. Students can sign up to classes. Each class has a forum and notification board, where online lecture times and other notifications are hosted. Cloud Learner is not going facilitate conducting online classes as it is a complete different application domain. The creator of Cloud Learner has made a deal with another SaaS provider that specializes in communication and unified communication solutions, namely UniCom. In short, UniCom offers online conferencing capabilities, that Cloud Learner lecturers are going to use to conduct online classes.
Cloud Learner User-story
Users can signup to Cloud Learner.
- Users can sign up as a lecturer - Lecturers can create courses and advertise them in Cloud Learner. Lectures start the class and each class would get,
- Notice board
- Forum
- Evaluation tests
- Online conferencing facility for conducting classes
- Users can sign up as students - Students can view the offered courses and subscribe to them after paying subscription fees. Students has access to forum and notification board once subscribed.
Cloud Learner Subscription Levels
Students can register and browse Cloud Learner free of charge. However lecturers have to pay subscriptions. There are three subscription categories available.
Demo
- One repetition of one course
- 25 student subscriptions
- One course
- 25 student subscriptions
- One course
- Unlimited number of student subscriptions
- Four courses
- Unlimited number of student subscriptions
Each class can have up-to maximum of 8 online conferences, and the the charges are included in the subscription.
High-level architecture for Cloud Learner
Cloud learner has several modules.
Class CRUD Service - Create, read, update and delete all class related functionalities such as forum, test and notices
Course CRUD Service - Create, read, update and delete all courses
Subscription Management Service - Manages subscription of students to services
User registration and Management Service - Handles all user related matters
Conferences are created for each online lecture in external communication provider upon request of the lecturer.