[Year 12 SofDev] FW: SD 2012 post mortem

[Kevork KROZIAN]

Hi Folks,

My comments and Mark's responses :

Section  A
1. Q 4  -  what a program will do surely is important from an ethical point of view especially when much of what a program does can be hidden such as gather additional information from a user's computer ??

That's assuming that the program will do something unethical, which is not hinted at in the stem. <C> on the other hand is certainly relevant. For D to be right, I think you have to inject some unstated and rare conditions.

2. Q 15  - I am not sure about this question.  What is the design aim here ?  To maximise game penetration in the market ?  Run the game on as many mobile phone platforms as possible ? Make the  game as powerful ( therefore appealing ) as possible and target faster processor based devices ? Without this information I think this question is not possible to answer

It wasn't easy. I used the process of elimination and didn't think its deeper implications through much  :-)

3. Q 16 -  Sadly a 1D array in PHP, Python and Perl can hold different data types . I know the answer "should be" record, but that betrays a lack of awareness of the recommended programming languages on the list and their features.

Yes, Maggie has mentioned this also.

Section B

1.       Q 1c - a single malware program can be both a worm and spyware by exhibiting features of each ( propagates without human intervention, exploits weaknesses , spreads over a network and gathers user information eg. Key logger that gathers user data and spreads without user intervention.

I am not sure if a student can provide anything more specific here.


The question baffled me - I agree with you. It's an empty question that has already been answered. What were they fishing for, I wonder?


2.       Q 4 and 5 - 9 marks ???    9% of the exam paper on these two questions ?  I guess it is one way to show students are really good as pseudocode or have shown an improvement on pseudocode.

I was expecting this to happen eventually.


Section C

1.       Q2. Is the mobile phone interacting with the AQADAS system or is the asthmatic ?  Remember the restaurant . It is the customer who submits orders in the Context Diagram rather than the waiter who is the person using the system to enter orders. The waiter appears in the Use Case.  I would have thought an asthmatic would appear in the Context Diagram.

I really pondered over this one after I realised something was missing in my first answer.
I read it that the phone provided symptom data to AQADAS, and CASSA provided data to AQADAS, but the DFD does say that the CASSA data is sent to the phone for collation and transmission to AQADAS... which would, as you say, be a data flow from one EE to another.  They indeed might have goofed putting a data flow from CASSA to AQADAS.  Excellent point.  They might say that CASSA provides data to AQADAS and the phone is just an intermediary, but the phone does have to collate the data...  Hmmm. Interesting... I might revisit that question.



2.       Q5. A VPN may be overkill here. An SSL tunnel would be fine and cheaper, easier, less effort wouldn't it ?  A VPN may need licenses for each concurrent user or could be free for open source VPN software.  Setup for a VPN could involve a lot of work here such as compatibility issues with devices and the server it is connecting to.

A fair point. I was assuming a cheap VPN software setup, not a hardware solution. In terms of data security it would be good.


3.       Q 7 - I think we are getting at a Queue data structure here with FIFO and a capacity of 24 x 12 records over 24 hours when a reading is taken every 5 minutes. The case study does refer  to a data store however and I would expect we would probably have a file of records captured as a queue.

Possibly, but aren't the date and time stored with each sample? If so, a queue would not be necessary to sequence the samples. I could think up a few answers for this one. I hope the markers are flexible with what they accept.


4.       Q 8 c -  In selecting the best design I think the ability to review the choices with one look makes Design 1 superior. Clicking dozens of times after an asthma attack on a smaller screen to open a second form would not be neither user friendly nor sensible I would think.

That's true, but it's at the expense of 50% more screen space. Which is more important?  Since the uni is selecting and providing the phones, they have the power to choose one that could accommodate design 1.  I agree it's good to see all of the data at once rather than having it hidden in submenus.


5.       Q 9 - Postcode can be a string as well and do the same comparison operations as an integer can since it is enumerated. I would expect the examiners to accept either intenger or string for Postcode.

Is there any benefit in storing it as string?  Integer=2 bytes. String=4.


Kind Regards

Kevork

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