Forum .LRN Q&A: Re: Blackboard building blocks

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Posted by Dave Bauer on
Nima,

I am aware there is something called building blocks for Blackboard, but not what the signifigance is. What are they and how can a user create one to extend the toolkit?

Obviously OpenACS/.LRN is an extendable toolkit so what is better or different about Blackboard's approach?

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Posted by Ernie Ghiglione on

Hi Nima, Dave,

About three months ago we started working on an integration with Blackboard using their building blocks. First it took quite a while to get around the limitations of Bbs API. Then we discovered that in different platforms (Windows, Solaris, etc) the API behaved a bit differently, which added quite a bit of pain to the process.

Additionally, if you require a simple data table to store whatever variables you need, guess what?, you can't use the same datamodel as Bb! So you have to resource to quite a few shortcuts and workarounds.

Comparing between Bbs building blocks and .LRN, I would prefer .LRN's /api-doc any day as it wins hands down.

.LRN is simple, robust, scalable and very extendable. Where as Bbs, well...

Ernie