Local Caching Server 2.0:
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About CAL Local Caching Server (LCS):
Enables efficient utilization of local school bandwidth by caching CAL test data locally.
With the traditional CAL system test data is downloaded from a central location for every student taking a test. This process can put a burden in the school's external Internet connection if a large number of students are testing simultaneously. With the CAL LCS architecture schools will be able to cache all the CAL tests in a local school or district level server, and students taking a test will download the test data from the local server instead of a central location. This process will eliminate the need of downloading the same test multiple times from the CAL central server. However; each client still needs to download all the test data from the local server and your school intranet should be able to handle the communication between each client and the local server.
Allows students to continue testing in case of any connectivity issues between your school and CAL central servers.
CAL LCS provides a solution for caching student responses. A feature of the CAL LCA is the ability for student responses to be cached locally until the student ends the test. Once the student ends a test session, CAL LCS saves the test responses at the central location. This new feature will allow students to continue taking a test, even in case of any internet problems between the local school and the central location. CAL LCS will cache all the student responses until it is able to connect to the central location and save the responses at the central location. However, no students will be able to take new tests until your Internet connectivity is reestablished. In this situation where CAL LCS has the student responses, student results will not be ready until Internet connectivity is reestablished and responses are successfully saved to central servers.
Ease of installation and maintenance.
CAL LCS 2.0 does not require any significant maintenance support from your system administrator, apart from installation and configuration of CAL LCS 2.0. CAL Local Caching Server does not require any commercial server hardware and you can use a high-end desktop that satisfies the minimum requirements to run the CAL LCS.
Uses a database to prevent any loss to test data or student responses, due to system crash or shutdown.
CAL Local Caching Server will store all the test data and student responses in a database on the hard disk of the system running CAL LCS. In case of system crash, shutdown or restart CAL LCS will restore the test data and responses from the database.
Displays a graph to monitor the number of students taking tests throughout the day.
Local Caching Server displays a plot that helps you to monitor the number of students taking the tests at any moment and throughout the day. This does not include the students taking practice tests but displays the count of all the students taking the Alaska Computerized formative Assessments.