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Exam Information
Time and Venue
Check the University Exam Timetable.
Past Year Exams
This semester is the first time B345 is run. There is no past year exam papers to review.
Sample Exam
Link to sample exam in PDF (162KB).
DO NOT assume that the questions from the sample exam will appear in the final exam. Less than 10% of the sample questions will appear unchanged in the final exam. However, there might be morequestions which are similar, or asking the same thing in different ways.
Exam Structure
There are 3 parts to the exam, totally 154 marks.
Part I consist of 42 multiple-choice questions of 2 marks each. Each question have 4 choices. Select one and only one choice.
Part II consist of 5 questions of 10 marks each. Each question is of the form "Give reasons ..." Look at the sample exam for examples.
Part III consist of 2 questions of 10 marks each. Each question is of the form "Describe ... using a diagram (or a set of diagrams)." Look at the sample exam for examples.
Answering Questions:
Answer all questions. Enter the answers directly on the exam manuscript in the spaces provided.
For Part II questions, answer in point form. Briefly describe each point if you need to to convince the marker you know what the point means. You will be awarded marks for the points you know and understand, rather than the way you present them.
For Part III questions, your diagram(s) should be the main part of the answer. Use text to mark out different parts of the diagram(s). Have very brief descriptions if necessary, to convince the marker you know what you are drawing.
Mark Distribution for Each Topic
The following is how marks are distributed in each topic:
Architecture: 40 marks
Development: 40 marls
Java and .NET: 40 marks
Data: 10 marks
Measurement: 18 marks
Context: 6 marksStudying for the Exam
Review lectures and required readings for each topic.See the Topic pages on the web site.
Reviewing tutorials and assignments
DO NOT use tutorial and assignment questions as an indication of exam questions. In the assignment and (especially) tutorials, the questions are deliberately left open-ended and without direct answers to enable open explorations of the issues, and the discussions to be as wide as possible. In the exam questions, although a lot of it you will still have to understand and apply your knowledge, they DO have definite answers that comes from the lectures and the required readings.
Areas to emphasize
For the exam, you should emphasize studying for the following questions. Most of the questions in the exam will be testing how well you know the following (see the sample exam for examples). In the case where you can answer all of the questions below, you will score very highly in the exam.
Architecture:
- What are the important parts of software architecture descriptions as given in IEEE Standard 1471? How does it improve the way we describe (eg network and Internet software) architectures?
- Why are there principles guiding the Internet Architecture? What are those principles? What problems causes us to consider those principles?
- What are the components of the World-Wide-Web? How do they work (briefly)?
- What are Web Services? What is in it? How do they work (briefly)?
- What is .NET? What are it's components? How do they work (briefly)?
- What are the components of Java (and wireless Java)? How do they work (briefly)?
- How does J2EE compare to .NET?
Development:
- Why is Internet and World-Wide-Web software different from other types of software? What are the things we need to know about developing software for the Internet and the World-Wide-Web?
- What are Agile Methodologies? Why are they important? What are their guiding principles? What are they good and bad at? What are some example Agile Methodologies? What are their main features?
- How do eXtreme Programming? How do the Rational Unified Process work? What are their components?
- What is a Pattern? Why is it important? What are it's components?
- What is the relationship between architecture descriptions and software development methodologies?
Data:
- What is the relationship between data, metadata, and program? What are some example metadata standards? What are they mainly used for?
- What are the components of a 3-tier web application? What is the function of each component? What are some of the ways to connect web applications to their back-end databases? What are the advantages and disadvantages for each method?
Measurement:
- Why is web measurements important? What are the ways we can gather web measurement data? What are the advantages and disadvantages or each? What are the steps involved in processing measurement data? What is a workload model? Why do we want to develop workload models? What are the web characteristics we can development workload models for?
Context:
- How does the Economy impact on the Internet? How does the Internet impact on the Economy? How does Social developments impact on the Internet? How does the Internet impact on Social developments?
Further Queries
If there are further queries, please use the Exam Queries group in the discussion forum to post questions. You may also email your queries to me. But if I believe my answers will be useful to other students, I will remove your name from the message and post to the discussion forum anyway. Therefore, it would be useful that you post your questions on the forum in the first place.
Ammendments
If I find mistakes in the instructions on this page, I will make an announcement using the Announcements group in the discussion forum, as normal for all announcements.
Final Comments
In this unit, I have emphasized concepts and principles more than anything else. The unit content are to support you understanding the technologies and issues relating to the technologies, rather than telling you WHAT the technologies are. Therefore, a lot of the unit have been open-ended to allow you the freedom to question and ponder.
However, now that we come to the exam, it is not the time to get you to explore further. The aim of the exam questions will be to test whether you have:
- Followed the lectures and done your required readings, and
- Understand what you have been reading.
Therefore, when studying, look for definite answers to the emphasis questions above. When answering Part II and Part III questions, give your points in straight forward manner.
H.L. Hiew
Unit Coordinator