NX: 48 hour Auto failure

[Terry Martinson]

I want to warn others that there is a chance of auto-failure if you don't actually implement the 48 hour rule (assuming your spec does mention it). There are quite a few threads out here regarding the 48 hour topic - some give alternatives, some suggest that you document it as a business requirement and not implement.
I received notice of autofailure for the "document but not implement" approach. Seems a little unfair to me considering others have passed with this approach and also it is not one of the "must" requirements.
I am attempting to appeal based on the fact that it is not a must requirement and I documented all my reasoning regarding this very well in both the choices document and the user guide. However, I may not win. If I had the choice to do it over again, I would just make some assumptions, document them and implement it.
Just wanted to warn everyone!
TJ

[Andrew Monkhouse]

Hi Terry,
That is very bad news. The only comment about 48 hours in the instructions I got were from the "Background" information:

URLyBird [...] take bookings only within 48 hours of the start of room occupancy.

Certainly nothing about a requirement.
Did your instructions have anything extra?
Did you put anything in your design decisions about the 48 hours?
What did the examiner say in their comments?
I certainly hope your appeal succeeds. Although I think it would be nice to implement a 48 hour busines rule, I think this would make the testing harder. And I don't think it should be an auto failure since it is not a 'must' condition.
Regards, Andrew

[Nathaniel Stoddard]

The first thing I did when I downloaded my specs was to highlight every "must" in the thing--there was no "must" near the 48-hour portion. (I did URLyBird 3.2.something).
Oh, I ignored it since my assignment didn't actually insert records into the database. They came magically from somewhere else. I passed just fine ignoring it.

[Satish Avadhanam]

Hi Terry, Very sorry to hear the news. That's really bad. I mean there is no indication like the so called "must" requirement for 48hrs.
Hope Sun takes your appeal into consideration and Pass you with good score. Thanks for the valuable info. Good Luck.
[ March 26, 2004: Message edited by: Satish Avadhanam ]

[Terry Martinson]

Thanks all for the kind words of support!
To answer a couple of Andrew's questions:

Did your instructions have anything extra?

No - basically same as yours, and just in the background/business section.

Did you put anything in your design decisions about the 48 hours?

Yes - totally covered it in both the choices document and my user guide. I feel I covered it extremely well and listed my reasons, etc.

What did the examiner say in their comments?

Exact copy from database:
"This application fails because it does not meet the application specifications. The sepcification states that "URLyBird" is a broker of discount hotel rooms. They take bookings only within 48 hours of the start of room occupancy. The submission does not meet this requirement. The application allows bookings for any rom an any time with no date checking. It even allows users to book rooms for dates in the past."
And then the initial response from the grader to my high level appeal:
"The specifications are clear in the instructions. The 48 hour rule is an essential part of the broker business model."
In here, he's also dinging me for no date validation at all. However, I know of at least one other person that did NO date checking at all, same as me, and passed.
Nathanial - I'm curious - did you do any date validation at all?
Andrew - did you get a chance to see my other post regarding my frustration at getting a response back from Sun? I would be interested in your thoughts.
My Other Posting about my Appeal
Thanks everyone.
TJ

[Nicholas Cheung]

Hi Terry,
I did not implement the 48 hours booking rule, but I am sure that there was no/low mark deduction.
I got 99 in general consideration and 70 for documentation. Thus, I dont think this should be a reason for auto fail.
I wish you can appeal successfully.
Nick

[Philippe Maquet]

Hi Terry,
That's totally unfair!
Just harass them till they let you pass...
We've seen multiple times in the past that it works when the failure was obviously unfair, which is the case here. So keep up!
It's unfair not only because it's not an explicit "must-be" thing, but also because I know many people who passed without implementing any booking date checking rule (at least Vlad, Bharat and Nicholas).
I cannot forget it because I argued with them about it (being in favor of such an implementation): see here.
In that thread, my conclusion was:

Anyway, we'll be graded by human beings. With a "MUST-BE-ONLY" development, it's possible that your grader thinks "Great ! The shortest assignment I ever saw, I'll save time with that guy !" and that you get a high score thanks to that. The same grader on another mood (or another grader), could "Mmh... This guy really did the minimum in all areas" and ... (I let you guess ).

But I couldn't even imagine an automatic failure!
But this at least confirms that the way you take not "must-be" instructions into account or not, may influence your score, whatever other people did and the score they got.
Anyway Terry, I bet you'll win your appeal. You may keep confident IMO.
You wrote:

I documented all my reasoning regarding this very well in both the choices document and the user guide.

and later posted your grader's arguments:

"This application fails because it does not meet the application specifications. The sepcification states that "URLyBird" is a broker of discount hotel rooms. They take bookings only within 48 hours of the start of room occupancy. The submission does not meet this requirement. The application allows bookings for any rom an any time with no date checking. It even allows users to book rooms for dates in the past."

So it would be interesting for us to know how you justified your choice. Could you post here a summary of your arguments?
Best regards,
Phil.
PS:For people who'd be interested by a 48-hours rule solution, here is one.

[Mehmet Atlihan]

It would be a terrible news for me if auto failure occurs for 48 hours specification as I have just uploaded UrLyBird without handling nor documenting this spec. However

This application fails because it does not meet the application specifications. The sepcification states that "URLyBird" is a broker of discount hotel rooms. They take bookings only within 48 hours of the start of room occupancy. The submission does not meet this requirement. The application allows bookings for any rom an any time with no date checking. It even allows users to book rooms for dates in the past."

This reason does not make sense. For example the database file I was given is full of records whose date fields belong to 2001 or 2002 years. It didnt have a single record whose date field is in 2004. In other words a date checking before booking will result in no booking at all thus make the application useless.
I will post my result and I hope I wont fail because of this.
Regards
Mehmet

[Terry Martinson]

Here is the type of documentation I included in my submission:
User Guide

Bookings should only be taken within 48 hours of the start of room
occupancy. You should consider this rule before booking a room.
The current release of this application will not prevent you from
booking a room outside of this 48-hour window. However, you need to
take this into account before choosing to book a room.

Choices

A 48-hour business rule was mentioned in the specs. I decided not to
implement this in the application. Instead, I include this business
rule in the User Guide and expect the CSRs to handle this rule
manually. My application allows the booking of any room
that has not already been booked for the following reasons:
1. Many rooms in my database file are either for rooms way in the
future or way in the past. Implementing this business rule would
allow for not very many rooms in my database to be booked.
2. There is currently no GUI administration type of function in this
application that would allow updating the available date of rooms.
Also, there is no GUI functionality for adding new records. The scope
of the assignment deals strictly with searching and booking, so once a
room is booked, it stays booked with no updates to either the owner
or date available fields.
3. The instructions say the "marking process will expect the exact
same data without any changes". I wanted to make sure that there will
be records out there in my database that the user/grader can successfully
book.
4. There also could be many issues dealing with different time zones
that would need to be researched before implementing date functionality.
I would need to talk to the users more to gain a better understanding
of their requirements before coding this rule.
This 48 hour booking restriction could certainly be a future enhancement
that is implemented at the same time as enhancements for administrative
type functions.

I posted a separate posting regarding my appeal frustrations. (separate appeal posting) Does anyone have any ideas on how I can get them to respond to me? I have no idea if they are actually considering my appeal or not. I have heard nothing back, despite multiple emails requesting a status.
Thanks.
TJ

[Philippe Maquet]

Hi Terry,
Arguments 1, 3 and 4 look reasonable to me (while 2 is a bit out of topic IMO). Hence, nothing bad in your argumentation per se ... except that you'd probably better have just silently forgotten to recall the rule (anyway to that grader).

I posted a separate posting regarding my appeal frustrations. (separate appeal posting) Does anyone have any ideas on how I can get them to respond to me? I have no idea if they are actually considering my appeal or not. I have heard nothing back, despite multiple emails requesting a status.

I read your other thread, but it's difficult to discuss a same topic spanned on two separate threads. That's why I reply here:

I have sent an appeal to Sun regarding my 48 hour autofailure. However, I am very frustrated because I have heard nothing back from them. This whole thing started back in February. I'll put the timeline of what has happened below.
2/20 - received initial auto-fail in database
2/20 - emailed high level appeal to the who2contact email
2/23 - a Sun rep sent a question to my grader and he responded
2/23 - Sun rep sent response back to me (I disagree with his response)
2/23 - I sent a detail appeal request back to this Sun rep
3/8 - sent email requesting status to same Sun rep
3/14 - sent email requesting status to who2contact address (w/email trail)
3/18 - talked with a new Sun person in Educational Services (Colorado) and sent him the email trail - he was going to chase it down
3/25 - talked with a different Sun person in Educational Services. Found out that the original Educational Services guy was now on vacation for a week. She asked me to send her the email trail
Ughhhhhh!!! Will this ever end? Is this typical? I would expect that they would tell me if they were not considering my appeal, but I don't know.
Does anyone have any other ideas on how I can get them to respond to me? I really don't want to dump the $$$$ for resubmission if I don't have to. I just want to find out if they are still considering my appeal or not.
Ideas anyone???
Thanks.
TJ

>She asked me to send her the email trail
If you didn't yet, you should as the next step.
AFAIK, SUN Educational Services always have proven their fairness when they had to deal with such an appeal.
SCJD grading, as any human process, is perfectible. But when you prove that it's been unfair, there is no reason not to win your appeal. And your case is obviously unfair: you were automatically failed for something which is *not* an automatic-failure condition, according to the instructions. So I guess it's just a question of time ... be patient.
Please keep us informed. I think of a next possible step with the help of people here who passed without implementing the 48-hours business rule, but I feel it's a bit early (it's probably better not to use all your weapons at once ).
Good luck,
Phil.
[ March 27, 2004: Message edited by: Philippe Maquet ]

[Terry Martinson]

Thanks Phil. I'll definitely keep you posted.
And I sent the final Sun contact the email trail about 90 seconds after I got off the phone with her. I just forget to mention that above.
TJ

[Bharat Ruparel]

Hello All,
I think that Phil has gotten slightly ahead of himself on this. Terry, I am sorry to know that you have to go through all this. Both myself and Vlad have implemented the 48 Hours rule in our submitted assignment. If you do a search on my name or the memeber id, you will find the thread where Vlad actually suggested an alternate strategy for me to parse the date field. I actually have implmented the check for both 48 Hours range as well as to disallow the booking if the date is in the past.
Phil, the thread that you have mentioned above, I was trying to caution Linda not to go overboard in terms of implementing an administrative GUI front-end to manage the date data. However, both I and Vlad did implement the 48 hour rule.
Having said that, I agree that this is not a MUST requirement and therefore automatic failure is a very harsh judgement in my opinion. I will argue with the grader along those lines if I were you.
I hope that things work out for you. It is, indeed quite frustrating process.
Best of Luck.
Bharat
p.s.
This is the link where Vlad was trying to help me.
https://coderanch.com/t/184125/java-developer-SCJD/certification/NX-URLy-Bird-Hours-Rule
[ March 27, 2004: Message edited by: Bharat Ruparel ]

[Philippe Maquet]

Hi Bharat,

I think that Phil has gotten slightly ahead of himself on this. Terry, I am sorry to know that you have to go through all this. Both myself and Vlad have implemented the 48 Hours rule in our submitted assignment. If you do a search on my name or the memeber id, you will find the thread where Vlad actually suggested an alternate strategy for me to parse the date field. I actually have implmented the check for both 48 Hours range as well as to disallow the booking if the date is in the past.

I stand corrected. Sorry, Terry. And the worse is that, in the thread you mentioned, I wrote myself! Argh, my old memory!

Phil, the thread that you have mentioned above, I was trying to caution Linda not to go overboard in terms of implementing an administrative GUI front-end to manage the date data.

It was a bit confusing to me, especially as you wrote in the same thread:

Just focus on all the MUSTS in the problem statement. What I did is that I extracted out all those MUST statements and made a separate document. I kept referring to this document throughout my SCJD effort to keep myselft focused. These are the things that you MUST absolutely do. Don't worry about "nice to haves."

... , that the 48-hours stuff in not one of those MUSTs, and that Nicholas (who just confirmed here that he didn't implement the rule), argued with you.
As far Vlad is concerned, I'm pretty sure that he argued against it in a discussion with me. It's so far away... and still possible that Vlad changed his mind afterwards, now you make me doubting.
Anyway Bharat, that's bad news for Terry. The "secret weapon" I had in mind for him was a list of people here who passed without it. And now we only have Nicholas in the list.
Terry, what you could do is initiate a new thread titled "48-hours rule: Did anybody pass without it ?", where you'd make a link to this thread and ask people who passed without implementing the date rule check to register themselves.
Just an idea. What do you think?
Regards,
Phil.
[ March 27, 2004: Message edited by: Philippe Maquet ]

[Terry Martinson]

Thanks Phil - good idea. See the thread asking for responses.
Actually, I know of 3 people so far - Nicholas, Nathaniel (from above in this thread) and Frankie from a while back.
I'll keep you posted.
TJ

[Nicholas Cheung]

Hi all,
I am pretty sure that Vlad did not implement the 48H rule as I have sent him a private message on Dec 17, 2003 regarding this issue after he received his result.
I decided not to implement this rule, becos I got supports from him.
Nick

[Philippe Maquet]

Hi Terry,
Great, I forgot to count Nathaniel.

Nicholas:
I am pretty sure that Vlad did not implement the 48H rule as I have sent him a private message on Dec 17, 2003 regarding this issue after he received his result.

That was my impression too, but...
Anyway, I just sent Vlad an email, pointing him to your two threads, Terry. If he didn't change his mail address in the meantime, I'm pretty sure he'll post here soon.
Best regards,
Phil.

[Nicholas Cheung]

Hi Terry,
Dont worried. Your appeal will be succeed.
IMO, the grader has the rights to deduce your marks if he thinks you have missed the 48H rule, however, this rule does not really that important, since the instructions never mention it again after the background part. Thus, I dont think it is approiate to mark those assignments which do not implement this rule as auto-fail, since it is NOT a *MUST* requirement.
Fight with SUN to get a fair grading, we all here support you.
Nick

[Stephen Galbraith]

I wish you luck in your discussions with Sun. I'm also the camp that isn't going (unless I have to) to implement this rule. It's so vague as to be unworkable in this context. 48hr is an EXACT amount of time (not 2 days, which is more vague). Start of room occupancy can vary between hotels (in the real world) so we cannot implement this precise timing. Even if you did go for implementing it, you could only approximate the rule anyway!
What a pain! Hope Sun look kindly on you (and therfore indirectly on me )
Steve

[Vlad Rabkin]

Hi Terry,
I am very sorry to hear you have failed.
I had URLyBird 1.1.1. I DIDN'T implement the 48 hours rule. I passed it in November with pretty good notes. However, I carefully documented it. Here is exactly how I explained it:

1. General Assumptions
The following major assumptions are made:
...
...
...
The Background section of the application overview mentions the following:
"They take bookings only within 48 hours of the start of room occupancy".
However, specification neither provides any details how it should be handled, nor requires to provide any functionality related to the issue. Thus, I consider this BACKGROUND information as the business rule, which is not required to be controlled by the program.

I would try to appeal. Of course, it doesn't guarantee you "win". I would try to write as many arguments as possible to convince Sun. However, I would not use arguments, that others have done the same and passed:
- it is not a good argument
- Sun can always say: "So what, we didn't see it. If have seen it the others would also fail".
Best,
Vlad
P.S. Guys, Andrew, Phil, Bharat, Jim and others, I am so sorry that I disappered for such a long time from he forum. I had some problems, but there no real excuse...

[Terry Martinson]

Thanks Vlad - good to hear from you again.
If I do get to a point where they are not listening to my arguments, I may push them to find out if the criteria which cause auto-failure is objective or subjective (i.e. the whim of the grader).
This would indirectly deal with the fact that others have passed, but yet not use an argument that really wouldn't get me anywhere.
I understand how many of the marked point deductions could be very subjective depending on your grader, but it's hard to believe that something as huge as autofailure would be that subjective. Basically, in this case what they are saying is that my making this particular design decision carries more weight than networking, locking, data class, etc.
What's really frustrating me now though is that I can't get anyone at Sun to give me a status on what's going on. I don't know if they are still considering my appeal or not, and it's been since 2/23.
Thanks all!
TJ

[Bharat Ruparel]

Hello Terry/Phil/Vlad,
I am glad to know that Vlad did pass without implementing the 48 Hours rule. That gives Terry more ammunition to argue with Sun. They certainly didn't put a "MUST" criteria on the 48 Hours rule and therefore, in my opinion, "auto-failure" is not justified. I think that you have sufficient grounds to appeal successfully.
This sort of thing worries me about SCJD. On one hand, it is a comprehensive, hands-on, design and develop certification. On the other hand, it tends to be so subjective! I feel that the other certificates, even though they are only multiple choice, have far more objectivity than SCJD. It seems like it almost depends on the moods and whims of the grader. I admit that this is what "real-life" is more or less like, but a certain measure of subjectivity would go a long way towards ensuring SCJD's long-term survival.
Regards.
Bharat

[Philippe Maquet]

Hi Vlad,
Thank you to have posted here so fast!
And the fact that you didn't implement the 48-hours rule (as I guessed) is good news for Terry indeed.
I've not the time to post here more tonight, but I'll do it tomorrow (as I'll reply to your kind email, Vlad ).
Best regards to all,
Phil.

[Nicholas Cheung]

Hi Terry,
Below is the arguments I put inside my choice.txt, I hope this can help you during the appeal.
Assumption:

URLyBird takes booking only within 48 hours of the start of room occupancy. However, based on the data given in the database file, we think that this requirement should be a business background process, rather than implementation requirement.
Thus, we decide not to add this constraint to the system, and we assume that there is another program which caters for updating the database file, such that the data inside the file fits the 48-hour booking requirement.
The system relies on this program to display data and book the rooms without further checking.

(4.2) Room Booking Consideration

In our assumption, we have not added the 48 hours booking constraint into the system although it is easy to be implemented by the following ways:
Option 1:
The system displays only records with data available that within 48 hours. Users can only book those displayed records.
Option 2:
The system displays all available records in the database file. However, when the user clicks the book button to book a particular record, the system checks whether the record fits the 48 hours requirement. The booking will be succeed if the requirement is fit. The booking will be fail otherwise.
However, since the CSRs are not allow to create new records or update existing records (except the owner field), we consider that the 48 hours booking constraint as a business process background information, which is ensure by another program that generates the records in the database file, rather than the implementation enforced in the system.

I hope this help can you.
NOTE:
I dont know whether I should provide such information. If it is illegal, please remove it. Sorry for the potential of violating the rule.
Nick

[Philippe Maquet]

Hi Terry,

Vlad:
However, I would not use arguments, that others have done the same and passed:
- it is not a good argument
- Sun can always say: "So what, we didn't see it. If have seen it the others would also fail".

Be reassured, Vlad: they won't ask you to return you certificate.
And about your "it's not a good argument", see below.

Terry:
If I do get to a point where they are not listening to my arguments, I may push them to find out if the criteria which cause auto-failure is objective or subjective (i.e. the whim of the grader).
This would indirectly deal with the fact that others have passed, but yet not use an argument that really wouldn't get me anywhere.

I wrote above "I think of a next possible step with the help of people here who passed without implementing the 48-hours business rule, but I feel it's a bit early (it's probably better not to use all your weapons at once ).
At this stage, you don't need to mention that others passed without implementing the 48-hours rule. You just don't need it IMO.
You obviously auto-failed for a not auto-failure condition, and that's enough as an argument to justify your appeal.

What's really frustrating me now though is that I can't get anyone at Sun to give me a status on what's going on. I don't know if they are still considering my appeal or not, and it's been since 2/23.

Your last contact (asking you to send another mail) is dated 3/25 ... just a few days ago.
What's happening now? It's just a guess, but as:
- on 2/23 your grader was asked for a confirmation of the auto-failure
- your grader didn't change his mind and confirmed it
- you disagreed and insisted (much )
it's highly probable that other graders will be asked about the issue. Not to make them review your submission, but just to answer a question like: "Is a lack of implementation of the 48-hours business rule, with a justification in choices.txt, a possible auto-failure condition, despite the fact that it's not an explicit "must-be" instruction?".
And if they do (they should IMO), it will take some time before you get an answer. But you can still recall them regularly, just to be sure not to be forgotten.
Now to come back to the "others passed" argument, I think that it should be your ultimate argument. I suggested you to build that list of people, just for you to have it at hand in case you'd need it, but not to use it immediately.
Your main argument is that you auto-failed on a not auto-failure condition.
But as "automatic failure" implies that the conditions are objective (the presence or not of the word "must" in the instructions, but also the word "automatic" ), the fact that other people passed in the same conditions *prove* the mistake in your case.
Now I think of someone who could be interested by this. I'll try to contact him/her.
Best regards,
Phil.

[Terry Martinson]

Just an update - I haven't heard back from either of my general contacts in the Sun Educational Services area. I don't have very high hopes from them though, because I think they will just end up sending it to the same "certification focal point" that is not responding to my requests for status.
Last night I sent another email to the general who2contact email:

Five weeks ago I disagreed with my Sun Certified Java Developer certification Exam result and sent a full description of my reasoning and a request for review.
I have heard nothing back despite repeated attempts to get a basic status.
Can someone please respond to these questions:
1. Is my request in the process of being reviewed?
2. Will I hear back via email when a decision has been made?
Thanks.

Hoping to hear something soon.
Thanks everyone.
TJ

[Philippe Maquet]

Hi Terry,

Last night I sent another email to the general who2contact email:

Perfect!
I love bets on positive things. Let's say that I bet with you that you'll get news from them within a few days.
Regards,
Phil.

[Nicholas Cheung]

Hi Terry,
I think they will reply you in the coming working day!
Thus, 6 hours to go!!! Be patient
Nick

[Terry Martinson]

Sun responded:
"Your assignment is being reviewed again. I will contact you with the assessor's response within 5 business days."
This is a painful process, but I remain hopeful.
Thanks.
TJ

[Philippe Maquet]

Hi Terry,

Sun responded:
"Your assignment is being reviewed again. I will contact you with the assessor's response within 5 business days."

Mmh... even more than betting on positive things, I love to win my bets!
I'll be on vacation for a week from Friday (with no internet connection), so I'll miss the good news when they'll happen.
And as I cannot congratulate you in advance (though I'm still 100% confident ), I just cross my fingers with you.
Best regards,
Phil.

[Nicholas Cheung]

Hi Terry,
As I said, they will contact you on 31 Mar, and they did contact you. Thus, I feel you will get a pass anyway!
I am in the same situation as Phil, but I need to have a business trip to Tokyo next week, and I will back on 14 Apr. I may also miss your good news.
Anyway, best wishes to the exam! I am sure that you can pass it without any difficulty. This is just an *exam* to test your patient!
Nick

[Terry Martinson]

I got favorable results on my appeal today, finally.
Mehmet - Good luck with yours. Noone should autofail for this, as my situation proves. If for some reason you do, appeal and you should be successful.
Stephen - hope this helps you also.
TJ

[Stephen Galbraith]

Hi Terry, good news!
Sounds like I have no excuse now but to get on with things and upload!
Congrats again!
Steve

[Peter Yunguang Qiu]

The application allows bookings for any room an any time with no date checking. It even allows users to book rooms for dates in the past."

I am confused. If a room's available date is last year(say 2003/04/25), and now(2004/04/17) the room is empty(No owner), a customer can NOT book this room right now?
My understanding is:
today is 2004/04/17, any rooms that date on 2004/04/19 or before is available for booking, as long as it is empty(NO owner).
According to the assignment specification, what date ranges are OK for booking today(2004/04/17)?
The db file doesn't have a field of "date starting occupancy"(the date I need the room).
I am totally confused.
Anyone can give me some explanation? Thanks.