A semantics based information distribution framework for large web-based course forum system

We propose a novel data distribution framework for developing a large Web-based course forum system. In the distributed architectural design, each forum server is full equipped with ability to support some course forums independently. The forum servers collaborating with each other constitute the whole forum system. Therefore the workload of the course forums can be shared by a group of the servers. With the secure group communication protocol and fault tolerance design, the new distribution framework provides a robust and high performance distributed architecture for the large course forum system. The forum servers can be settled in anywhere as long as a broadband network connection to Internet is provided. Our experimental performance testing results show that the large forum system is a high performance distributed system with low network overhead cost. In addition, a semantics based clustering algorithm is developed to classify the courses by the content relevance of their teaching material. Relevant course forums can be arranged on the same forum server together. Hence our distribution framework also provides a knowledge-based taxonomic storage solution to build a large course teaching material digital library.