OLAT has a fully compatible SCORM 1.2 runtime environement. Due to some SCORM concepts it differs a lot from the IMS content packaging viewser also integrated in OLAT. Each content object (Sharable Content Object [SCO]) communicates with OLAT over a separate channel with backend while the user is browsing the content. The API each SCO is looking for consits out of 5 javascript functions that need to be present in the SCO content.To communicate with the backend we relay on the not yet so commonly used XMLHttpRequest javascript object. It allows us to do asynchronous SCORM API call without the need for an Java Applet or other plugin technolgies.

The SCORM backend consits of three parts. First part is a standard OLAT controller which listens to the SCORM API calls and passes them further to the SCORM backend. The controller delivers also the content which is displayed in an IFrame. The API calls are passed to the API Adapter which is used in other projects as well (Ilias and ATutor).

All folders accessible through the GUI within OLAT are managed by the FolderRunController. The actual file operations are further wrapped by a Virtual Filesystem (VFS). See the section on Section 3.2.1.5, “Virtual Filesystem (VFS)” VFS for further details. Folders can have security restrictions such as read/write restrictions and quotas. All this is implemented through the functionality provided by the VFS abstraction layer.

All of a user's folder are exported via WebDAV through a single unique mountpoint at webdav://your.server.com/olat/webdav/. The user authenticates via an OLAT authentication provider (see section on authentication) and is presented its personal briefcase, and any coursefolders/groupfolders/sharedfolders she might have access to.