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Essay exam

 
Greenhorn
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I am currently preparing to upload my assignment and am thinking about my essay exam. I found an .article that I thought that people might find interesting - it certainly has some sensible advice in it.
However a section in it has confused me and was wondering what others thought of it.
In it Alan Trottier suggests example questions for the essay exam and the one that concerns me is his answer to question 1.
It appears to be saying that (taking Fly By Night as an example) if a user were to select, for example , Denver as an origin airport and London as a destination airport then the resulting list displayed would contain all records that have Denver as an origin airport PLUS all records that have London as a destination airport.
My assumption (which I thought was quite intuitive) was that the resulting list would contain only records that have Denver as an origin airport and London as a destination airport.
So either
1) I have misunderstood the requirements
2) I have misread Alan Trottiers article
3) Alan has misunderstood the requirements
4) Either way could be a valid interpretation of the requirements
Answers on a post card please - or at least posted here would be good
[ January 20, 2004: Message edited by: Jo Fail ]
 
Greenhorn
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I too have used Alian's book to prepare both my project and for the exam. I have found a few problems with his book, especially since his project was different from mine (I have UrlyBird1.2.1). I never liked his interpetation of the search critera (that it would return rows that had either value mathch instead of both. If you wanted all matches for a criteria, use the wildcard, otherwise expect only rows that match both. However, I did think his sample questions covered about every angle that they could ask, even though some of his questions were non-applicable because they were only for the old project.
I am taking the exam tomorrow, I am going to check out the article link you mentioned, thanks.
 
Ranch Hand
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Hi,
I have Alain's book as well and I think it has much in it that is very helpful. I think the link to his article given above contains very good advice about how to prepare for the essay part of the exam (very similar to advice he gives in his book). While the book has good advice, it also contains a fair number of absolute clinkers. I think the business with the search criteria is one of these. Sometimes I think he put stuff like this in there just to see if people were really thinking about what he is saying or just blindly taking what he says on faith. If you have a number of search criteria, the natural assumption if you give values for more than one criterion is that the criteria will be considered conjunctively, not disjunctively. That is to say, a record satisfying such criteria would have to match each criteria simultaneously; there is an implied AND, not an implied OR. His interpretation on this point is I believe eccentric and counterintuitive. I've never run across an application that made a similar interpretation. The book desperately needs a revised edition or at least an errata site.
Hope this helps,
George
[ January 20, 2004: Message edited by: George Marinkovich ]
 
Ranch Hand
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I saw that article before I have it bookmark good call, though.
 
Jo Fail
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Thanks guys at least I know that I'm not completely off base now.
Dev - I guess that it's possible - if you don't have a life
 
Dixon Alexander
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Huh,
I have set out a Plan/Schedule to have it done by the end of July, except that I won't have the Business Component at that time, instead I plan to take the Oracle 9i: Intro to SQL
 
Ranch Hand
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Hey gang,
For anyone taking the exam, I think Alain's suggestions are perfect. If you create a detailed design decisions document, as required by the project, and focus on it before you take your exam, you won't be caught off guard.
Alain has a battery of questions that he suggests you answer. I recommend you do these to the best of your ability. I found that almost all of the questions asked on my exam were covered, one way or another, by Alain's battery.
Now it's just a waiting game for me to see how well I did :-)
Cheers,
Jason
 
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