cmi.suspend_data string length
May 11, 2016
Hi,
First I want to say thank you to all the folks at Articulate who have helped us out with our issues. We ask much of you and you are a fantastic resource.
We publish in SCORM 1.2 and have noticed some of the string lengths are approaching the max 4096 characters that cmi.suspend_data allows. Does Studio / Presenter / Quizmaker use some sort of limiter or truncation to reduce the number of characters used for this field before it sends it to the LMS or when it creates the string?
I am curious as to whether the string length is too long for the LMS and is dumping or not accepting the data which is then not allowing the lesson to restart where it left off.
I have a specific case where a student has tracking data for 17 questions into a 100 Q quiz and the cmi.suspend_data field that is in our database is 4036 characters long (thanks to Word's word count feature.) They have reported that they left the quiz around Q 56ish but when they go back in to resume it starts them at Q 36ish. This student is using OS X Yosemite and originally used Safari 8 but we asked them to update and they changed to Firefox 46. Flash is enabled and up to date at v21. This student has taken 3 tests of 100 Q each (all unique SCORM 1.2 files) and none of them have worked for them specifically. They only took the first test with the outdated browser. I thought that may have left some corrupt data in the database or something but it happened on the next 2 tests while using Firefox 46. Other students do not have the same issues with the same SCORM files. I can not replicate the issue with my machine (Win 10 using Firefox 46).
I have another student who did not report a problem and finished the test successfully and the string for that same field is 4081 characters long.
Does the browser type matter in how long this string is or how it is created, truncated or sent to the LMS?
Any feedback is helpful but I am mainly interested in how Presenter deals with the string length in SCORM 1.2.
Thanks in advance.
5 Replies
The string length will be sent complete irrespective of the browser, it may get truncated by the LMS however Studio will send the complete data.
It is common for LMS's to enforce the string length and truncate the dat, odd that it is 4036 rather than 4096, perhaps it found a "logical" break point.
The behaviour of returning at the wrong place is synonymous with incomplete resume data. Can you increase the limit in your LMS?
Have you checked other users resume data, it may be possible that reseting this user may help if others have not had issues.
Hi Steve,
As Phil mentioned the suspend data is not browser specific, but you may want to read a bit more about the suspend data here and it's compressed as a part of the Presenter or Storyline set up, and as such isn't human readable.
Thank you for the responses.
Ashley I was wondering when you say compressed I just want to insure that I understand that. Do you mean that the data is compressed to fit under the 4096 if the original string was say 6000 characters long? Do you mean that it is taking a much longer set of code then compressing it but not taking into account the 4096 character limit? Sorry for needing such specificity. It will help me determine our next steps.
Hi Steve,
We compress it throughout the user taking a course so that it makes hitting the 4096 character limit a bit farther off - but it's still easy to get there and there are a few ways noted here that you can send less suspend data.
Gotcha! Thanks.
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