Hi Tejs,
I feel the same sort of fright about many of the "must-be" injunctions in my own assignement (URLyBird) : if, after a search for the coupled words "automatic" and "failures", you re-read the whole assignment, well you can get afraid, indeed ... :-)
I cannot answer for sure in your case because I have a different assignment. But by re-reading the whole assignment
doc and using some common sense, I think that such a question brings the right answer : if you have only one database file (as in the URLyBird assignment), it doesn't make any sense to keep it read-only... So the "you may not modify this file" instruction should mean that you cannot bring any
structural change to the file.
Warning : In my own assignement, in the packaging section, I got a related "must-be-or-fail" instruction :
The original, unchanged database file that was supplied to you. Note that you must keep a copy of the original database file supplied to you, and this must be the file you submit. The marking process will expect the exact same data without any changes.
If it's applicable for you, make sure you upload the
original file and not the one you used for
testing.
Regards,