Scorm-based test causes too many Blackboard http requests

Question

We are looking into a problem with scorm-based tests and learning  modules created in Adobe Captivate. Viewing the scorm content in our Blackboard LMS generates ridiculous amounts of network traffic. A simple click in the scorm module triggers  anything between 10 and 100+ http-requests, even if no interaction with  the server is required. The same click sometimes results in 5 requests, other times in 50  requests or more.It's always a sequence of the same two requests, see below (only the max value in "Keep-Alive: timeout=10, max=98" counts down).
If these scorm modules are taken by a group of students, the enormous amount of http requests put a lot of pressure on our Blackboard system, which results in a slow behaviour of the modules. Has anyone seen this behaviour and does anyone know of a way to prevent it?
(below, part of the http headers collected with the Firefox Live HTTP Headers Add-on)
https://...cc.kuleuven.be/courses/1/a-C112956-K/content/_7409447_1/SCORM_support/scorm_sup port.swf?invokeMethod=methodToExecute&lc_name=lc_name&param=tempVar|true
GET /courses/1/a-C112956-K/content/_7409447_1/SCORM_support/scorm_support.swf?invokeMethod=me thodToExecute&lc_name=lc_name&param=tempVar|true HTTP/1.1    
Host: ...cc.kuleuven.be    
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US;     rv:1.9.2.12) Gecko/20101026 Firefox/3.6.12    
Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8    
Accept-Language: en-us,en;q=0.5     Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate    
Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7    
Keep-Alive: 115    
Connection: keep-alive    
Referer: https://...cc.kuleuven.be/courses/1/a-C112956-K/content/_7409447_1/ABT%20Excel%20Toets4.ht m    
Cookie: JSESSIONID=2FFDF51EB1DFD4B73B539C63607A9177.root;     __utma=137656618.1128290341.1286972380....
If-Modified-Since: Mon, 06 Dec 2010 17:40:03 GMT
If-None-Match: W/"149-1291657203000"
HTTP/1.1 304 Not Modified
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2010 09:00:13 GMT    
Server: Apache/1.3.41 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.8.31 OpenSSL/0.9.8i mod_jk/1.2.27    
X-Blackboard-appserver: ...cc.kuleuven.be    
X-Blackboard-product: Blackboard Learn™ 9.0.505.0    
Set-Cookie: session_id=80EA2381B7970776B9C3202ADBDEC94E; Path=/    
Set-Cookie: s_session_id=FB7D2433E54EFA941E49E6C79B536CDA; Path=/;     Secure    
Etag: W/"149-1291657203000"    
Content-Length: 0    
Keep-Alive: timeout=10, max=100   
Connection: Keep-Alive    
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
https://../courses/1/a-C112956-K/content/_7409447_1/SCORM_support/scorm_support.swf?invoke Method=methodToExecute&lc_name=lc_name&param=tempVar|true    
GET /courses/1/a-C112956-K/content/_7409447_1/SCORM_support/scorm_support.swf?invokeMethod=me thodToExecute&lc_name=lc_name&param=tempVar|trueHTTP/1.1    
Host: ...kuleuven.be    
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US;     rv:1.9.2.12) Gecko/20101026 Firefox/3.6.12    
Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8    
Accept-Language: en-us,en;q=0.5    
Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate    
Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7    
Keep-Alive: 115    
Connection: keep-alive    
Referer:     https://../courses/1/a-C112956-K/content/_7409447_1/ABT%20Excel%20Toets4.htm    
Cookie: JSESSIONID=2FFDF51EB1DFD4B73B539C63607A9177.root;     __utma=137656618.1128290341.1286972380...
If-Modified-Since: Mon, 06 Dec 2010 17:40:03 GMT    
If-None-Match: W/"149-1291657203000"   
HTTP/1.1 304 Not Modified    
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2010 09:00:13 GMT    
Server: Apache/1.3.41 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.8.31 OpenSSL/0.9.8i mod_jk/1.2.27    
X-Blackboard-appserver: ...cc.kuleuven.be    
X-Blackboard-product: Blackboard Learn™ 9.0.505.0    
Set-Cookie: session_id=80EA2381B7970776B9C3202ADBDEC94E; Path=/    
Set-Cookie: s_session_id=FB7D2433E54EFA941E49E6C79B536CDA; Path=/; Secure    
Etag: W/"149-1291657203000"    
Content-Length: 0    
Keep-Alive: timeout=10, max=98    
Connection: Keep-Alive    
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1

Answer 1

Simply add the call to your exception hander. E.g.
EXCEPTION
         WHEN OTHERS
         THEN
               UTL_TCP.Close_All_Connections;
               INSERT INTO excep_trans (P_WORD_EXP, UPDATE_TIME, COUNTER)
                 VALUES (VC1.RAW_VAL_TXT, SYSDATE, cnt);
..etc..
END;Also consider using proper coding standards. There is NO modern day programming language standard that says to write (selective) reserved words in uppercase. Write in lowercase. Use camelcase and pascalcase for variable names and procedures/functions/methods. Restrict the use of uppercase to defining identifiers such as compiler macros or constants.
Do yourself a favour and read, understand and apply the basic naming standards as detailed in .Net Guidelines for Names and Code Conventions for the Java Programming Language.