Learning Center is a .net web application based on C# with Microsoft SQL Server as its database engine.

The Learning Center is based on a standard asp.net 4.8 web application with Microsoft SQL server database as its backend datastore.

Depending on the client size and license agreement, each client has its own SQL database with its data securely separated from other clients.

Authentication

Each Learning Center installation supports multiple public sites and authentication providers, so, depending on your needs, one installation can support multiple authentication mechanisms like Native Learning Center Username/Password authentication, ADFS, SAML or Azure AD/O365.

REST API

Each Learning Center can enable/disable REST API support. The API enables clients to work with data via a standard REST API using either basic or Learning Center’s native authentication ticket system.

Storage and database

Depending on the installation and clients' needs, Learning Center supports Microsoft SQL 2008 and upwards plus Azure SQL. Any files uploaded or generated by the system are stored under the IIS file system or in the database.

Each installation is a standalone single-tenant app with a single-tenant database design, which means that each customer installation has its own separate database and installation and nothing is shared between installations.

Database encryption

To protect against the threat of malicious activity, Learning Center uses service-managed transparent data encryption. This means that real-time encryption and decryption of the database, associated backups, and transaction log files at rest are performed without requiring changes to the application.

Transparent data encryption encrypts the storage of the entire database by using a database encryption key. This key is protected by the transparent data encryption protector as a service-managed certificate (service-managed transparent data encryption). If required, this can be set up as an asymmetric key stored in Azure Key Vault (Bring Your Own Key). 

Caching

Depending on the server environment of the client, Learning Center supports in-process and out-of-process caching via services like Redis.

Learning Center Development Process and Environment (DevOps)

Learning Center uses Visual Studio Online(VSO) as the main process and development framework. All developers use visual studio as their work environment. The development team use the Agile and Scrum approach to software development.

The following diagram describes the phases of the development cycle.

Learning Center has continuous, nightly builds that get deployed to the release candidate server every night (currently hosting on azure on https://rc.Learning Center.net) – here partners and relevant clients can request access to see the latest builds. Based on the SLAs and each client's individual agreement and setup, the Learning Center can be released on the client's production environment. Any release is done within the agreed service windows and typically with weekly/monthly frequencies.

For release management, Learning Center uses VSOs release management tools and release agents for all SaaS and PaaS installations.

Monitoring and Operations

Learning Center’s operations team uses Azure AppInsights to monitor availability and performance on each hosted instance and has alerts set up for changes in performance and availability.

Learning Center Software as a Service (SaaS) Amazon hosting environment

The SaaS solution is based on the Amazon cloud running on a classic web/IIS front end with a SQL backend using two virtual machine windows server clusters.

This Amazon environment follows and supports the standard Learning Center SLA and has nightly backup routines. The default Learning Center environment is located on Amazon’s West Europe data center.

Learning Center Platform as a Service (PaaS) azure installation (Standard)

For Azure installations, Learning Center requires:

• Azure App Service (Web) instance
• SQL Database
• Storage account
• Optionals: CDN/Queue

Currently, Learning Center has hosting environments on the Azure South East Asia, Norway East and West Europe data centers. But due to the integrated VSO release agents and Azures management portal, any configuration and location is supported.

Learning Center also supports deploying the application into customers own azure tenants as long as the need services and permissions needed is available.