System Technologies

The online assessment is an ASP.net 5.0 MVC6 system utilising Microsoft Azure cloud technology. The system makes extensive use of AJAX with communication between the Client and Server being handled by web services exchanging JSON strings.

We understand that many schools have limited bandwidth in and out of their sites, so minimising the traffic for a given assessment is crucial. The correct balance between server and client tasks minimises the handling of data back and forth and maximises the available bandwidth to the server.

Our datacenters are geo-redundantly maintained in Sydney, Melbourne and Singapore but the latest Azure technologies are employed to sit over these and create a robust system which handles any unexpected server and network failures with ease.

Web Apps

Web apps supply the client-server software application which the client runs in their web browser. They maintain the assessment interface without the need for distributing or installing software. Because they support cross-platform compatibility, many different devices can deliver the assessments.

DocumentDB

DocumentDB is a non-relational database service for managing JSON documents. It handles real-time consistent queries with very high rates of document updates because it operates without requiring a schema or secondary indices for the data.

Redis Cache

The Redis Cache provides the high level of scalability for the assessments. It sits on top of the DocumentDB as a non-persistent memory based data system. It stores questions, answers and student assessment details in memory and is around 100 times faster than traditional data.