National Online Examination System: An Architectural Perspective

C-56/1 & B-30 Sector 62 -Noida

Pradeep Kumar , Pankaj Nirwan , P Govind Raj

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Background
NASSCOM Recommendation to the Government of India DIT realizing the initiative through C-DAC Objective: Design and Develop a robust, fault tolerant, secure, and scalable and an adaptive system through which examinations can be delivered on an on demand basis in selected examination centers spread across the country. Implementation Phases
Phase 1: Software for conducting exams at National Levels to be rolled out. Phase 2: Collaborative environment for collecting Questions into the question bank.
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Why not use Standard LMS ?

Designed to deliver content and manage the teaching learning process. Not designed to handle large system loads Computer Adaptive Testing is not incorporated.

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Functional Requirements
Registration
Demographic Details Photographs Booking of Exam Slot
Payment through Gateway/DD

Admit Card Generation Manage Questions

Matrix/Vector Creation Question Pool Management Module

Exam Conduction Result Generation

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Non Functional Requirements

No Vendor Lock in. Scale Out Vs Scale Up. Ease of Extendibility High System Throughput High Availability Security/Privacy Key Escrow Mechanisms
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High Level Architecture

Logging

UI on Flex

Security

ORM
ORM Hibernate

Transaction

Blaze DS Flash Player Browser/AIR

JDBC AOP Spring Core Tomcat on Tuned JVM Presentation Tier Context

DB

Persist ence ORM Tier

Remoting Tier Business Tier

Data Tier

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High Level Architecture

Logging

UI on Flex Blaze DS Flash Player Browser/AIR

Security Transaction JDBC AOP Spring Core

ORM
ORM Hibernate

DB

Context

Tomcat on Tuned JVM Presentation Tier

ORM Tier Data Tier

Persi stenc e

Remoting Tier Business Tier

AS3 VO

Java

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High Level Architecture

Logging

UI on Flex Blaze DS Flash Player Browser/AIR

Security Transaction JDBC AOP Spring Core

ORM
ORM Hibernate

DB

Context

Tomcat on Tuned JVM Presentation Tier

ORM Tier Data Tier

Persi stenc e

Remoting Tier Business Tier

AS3 VO

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High Level Architecture

Logging

UI on Flex Blaze DS Flash Player Browser/AIR

Security Transaction JDBC AOP Spring Core

ORM
ORM Hibernate

DB

Context

Tomcat on Tuned JVM Presentation Tier

ORM Tier Data Tier

Persi stenc e

Remoting Tier Business Tier

AS3 VO

Java VO

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High Level Architecture

Logging

UI on Flex Blaze DS Flash Player Browser/AIR

Security Transaction JDBC

ORM
ORM Hibernate

DB

Context

AMF

AOP Spring Core Tomcat on Tuned JVM

ORM Tier Data Tier

Persi stenc e

Presentation Tier

Remoting Tier Business Tier

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Business Tier: Spring

Aspect Orientation Design
Declarative Transaction Management Security

Lightweight
Use POJOs to manage transactions , persistence , communication , job scheduling , batch processing etc.

Productive
Easy to learn. Jolts productivity Award 2006
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Security Subsystem

Application Logic Security Subsystem

LDAP Biometric Authentication Database Storing Credentials
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Security Subsystem Architecture

Request

Login Credentials

BlazeDS Channel Authentication

FilterInvocationInter ceptor

MethodSecurityInter ceptor

Login Credentials are put in Flex User Interface.

The BlazeDS Channel Authentication would be done using Spring Security by contacting a User Repository.

URIInterceptor

TransactionProxy

Spring Security Interceptors

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Role Based Access Control

Access Decision through AcessDecisionManagers
Affirmative Based Access decision Manager Role Voter
Grant access of the resource to the user that has the same role as required by the resource

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DEPLOYMENT ARCHITECTURE
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Horizontal Clustered Environment

L B

L B Active Passive Clustered Load Balancer based on Apache mod_proxy , mod_proxy _balancer

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Horizontal Clustered Environment

L B

Tomcat 1

L B

Tomcat 1

Tomcat Application Server Load Balancing: ByByte / ByRequest

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Horizontal Clustered Environment

L B

Tomcat 1

MYSQL L B Tomcat 1 Design Deviates from conventional HA Solution

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Horizontal Clustered Environment in NOES

T E R R A
MYSQL L B

L B

Tomcat 1

Tomcat 1 C O T A

MYSQL

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Transparent Clustering

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Transparent Clustering
HA is available as a service of JVM

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KEY DESIGN PRINCIPLES

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Typical Exam Session Performance

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Typical Exam Session Performance

No DB I/O during Exam

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Typical Exam Session Performance

Hibernate 2nd Level Cache

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Typical Exam Session Performance

Async. Commit

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ISSUES FACED DURING IMPLEMENTATION

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Integrating Flex and Spring

Integration Flex and Spring
Not intuitive BlazeDS Extensions were designed Later , later 2009 community support

Transaction
MySQL Storage Engines Transaction Management for Non DB operations Use of Self Reference instead of this pointer
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Conclusion and Future Work

Exams Conducted
C-DAC PG Examinations C-DAC Recruitment Exams
Across the country in 10 C-DAC Centers for 10 days

300 successful runs of Exam Conduction DOEACC CCC Examination at 4 Regional DOEACC Centers.

Initial Stress Testing 5,000 users using 2 Tomcat Servers

Trying to scale further

Efforts in integration with Eucalyptus and federate across different C-DAC/DOEACC Data centres in the country. Using Query Optimization with Hibernate on the Fly.

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THANK YOU

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Aspect Orientated Design

Module 1 Module 1 Module n

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Aspect Orientated Design

Module 1 Module 2 Module n

Security

Logging

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Aspect Orientated Design

Module 1 (core Concerns) Module 2 (Core concerns) Module n (Core Concerns)

Security (Cross Cutting Concerns)

Logging(Cross Cutting Concerns)

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OOD to Model Cross Cutting Concerns

Module 1: Functional Req. Module 2: Functional Req.

Cross Cutting Concern

Cross Cutting Concern

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OOD to Model Cross Cutting Concerns

Module 1: Functional Req. Module 2: Functional Req.

Cross Cutting Concern

Cross Cutting Concern

Code Scattering Code Tangling

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AOD to Model Cross Cutting Concerns

Module 1: Functional Req. Module 2: Functional Req.

Weaved Cross Cutting Concern Aspect

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Aspect Orientation at Business Tier

Logging Transaction Management
Declarative Transactions Annotations (@Transactional PROPOGATION_LEVEL)

Access Control Mechanism

Annotations based RBAC at method invocation level.

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