The first of my exams this year, and one of the lesser of the many evils I am facing.

The rubrik of this exam was 7 questions out of 7, so no room for breathing space.

Question 1

• A - Easy question outlining the three driving factors for integration driving factors and tactical vs. strategic initiatives
• B - Another easy question to indicate the level of integration that should be used in three different companies, giving justification for each

Question 2

• Seemed initially an easy question, although upon reflection may have been harder than I thought. Basically give reasons why using a MOM and integrated enterprise would be better than the existing system. The part I was unsure of was the discussion of "integration facets", a term which I don't remember ever hearing - hopefully it just refers to the properties and isn't something I've totally missed

Question 3

• Discussion of a paper by Nicholas Carr called IT Doesn't Matter, just mentioning the main points of the paper and explaining your standpoint

Question 4

• A - Discussion of how to integrate legacy systems
• B - Legacy system maintenance, wasn't quite sure how to answer this question, ended up reiterating parts from A

Question 5

• Another tricky question, in two parts to discuss the use of either interoperability, federation, consolidation or integration with respect to two companies. For a total of 8 marks there didn't seem that much to say.

Question 6

• Easy question to discuss the issue of performance in Internet-Based systems and to draw a couple of failsafe devices used for the hardware

Question 7

• Another simple question to write a small essay based upon parts of the course, I did the essay on EDI vs. XML as a method of data exchange

All in all not a bad exam, one of the nicer ones to have as the first anyway.
- Chris