Life, and how to live it!

So today was host to the DBIT4 exam, one which was either going to be easy enough or a stinger. Fortunately it was relatively well received by all.

Being four out of four questions, I was a bit dubious about some of the course material that I was less clued-up-on coming up. The spread, however, was quite pleasing; covering all the main points of the course - none in too much detail!

Question 1

• A - Definition of statelessness wrt HTTP, naming an advantage and disadvantage[3]
• B - Outlining DNS resolution[5]
• C - Comparison of UDP to TCP [3]
• D - Discussion of IPv6 improvements on IPv4 [7]
• E - Public key algorithms, use for encryption and integrity verification [7]

Question 2

• A - Passing parameters to middleware applications [2]
• B - Scripting for DB update (I used PHP) [12]
• C - Justification of technology used in B and comparsion with other technology [5]
• D - Benefits challenges of using JavaScript, example solution to earlier problem [6]

Question 3

• A - Define valid and well-formed wrt XML documents [2]
• B - Writing DTD for specified XML document [7]
• C - Schemas question, advantage and disadvantage of use [3]
• D - XPATH question [3]
• E - Main differences between SAX and DOM [4]
• F - SAX or DOM pseudo-program [6]

Question 4

• A - E-commerce effects on offline shopping [5]
• B - Increasing search engine exposure [4]
• C - Desirable features of DB for web content [5]
• D - Web service advertisement and location [6]
• E - CORBA expansion and explination of how a request is demultiplexed [5]

Although most of the paper went fine, I forgot how to update a DB using PHP! Also I just didn’t know the CORBA expansion and didn’t have a clue about the demultiplexing (didn’t read it). I did however draw a COBRA in the exam, labeled it and gave it red eyes.

Here’s hoping tomorrow goes as well,
- Chris