An interactive multimedia distance learning system using distributed-object computing technology

Life-long learning is a major challenge for all companies, their employees and every other person interested in personal development. Distance learning and teletraining applications are strongly based on distributed multimedia information. In this paper an architecture of a scaleable corporate distance education system and the steps taken to guarantee different levels of quality of service (QoS) to the users are presented. The key components of the system are described in detail. The communication and middleware infrastructure as key elements of the architecture have to provide end-to-end quality of service support to the applications via application programming interfaces (APIs). Therefore, related architectural approaches and QoS-aware communication and middleware APIs are compared. Finally, a system architecture and the implementation status of the corporate distance learning and teletraining system are outlined.