MIS3501 - Exam 3 - Study Guide

The format of the exam

You will have the entire class in which to complete the exam. The exam is open book, open notes, open Internet. In the exam students will be asked to complete an application that is already begun. Students will be expected to implement their solution on the class server.

The content of the exam

The exam is intended to assess your comprehension of topics we have learned up to this point in time, with an emphasis on the last several weeks of the semester.

Here’s a list of topics we have covered since exam 2:

  1. The MVC pattern
  2. Additional form elements (check boxes, selects, radio buttons, text areas)
  3. Sessions and Cookies

Grading

Here are some things I WON’T be looking for when evaluating code.

  1. Is the output accessible? (Are labels used OK? Any other accessibility flags?)
  2. Error trapping above and beyond what is asked of you in the exam question. (That is, you needn’t worry about what to do if the network connection fails!)
  3. Usability / nice-to-have features above and beyond what is asked of you in the exam question.

Here are some things I WILL be looking for when evaluating code.

  1. Does the code run without error or warning?
  2. Does the code work in the fashion described by the problem?

The exam is broken down into series of steps. The point value of each step is indicated on the exam. Steps are evaluated on a “works / doesn’t work” all-or-nothing basis.

Failure to upload and deploy your work successfully may result in a score of 0 on exam questions. Be sure to budget time for this on the day of the exam.

Transferring your exam work to another student, either deliberately or through negligence, will be considered cheating.

How to study

·  Review Chapter 4 of your textbook (only if you need a refresher on PDO)

·  Review Chapter 5 – MVC

·  Review Chapter 7 – Form Elements

·  Review Chapter 12 – Cookies and Sessions

·  Refactor the “2spooky” application to use the MVC pattern.

·  Create your own study guide & examples. A good study technique would be to make your own versions of the suggestion box.

o  Make one with checkboxes.

o  Make one with radio buttons.

o  Make one with a selection list.

o  Make one with a text area.

o  Make one with a combination of the above elements.

o  Use session variables to store user input, and block duplicate input.

o  Make sure you can use filter_input in these situations. Can you:

§  Validate an email address?

§  Validate an IP address?

§  Validate a URL?

o  Make sure you can write the collected user input into a database table, and get it out again. This is a fundamental skill that you should have acquired in this course.

o  Be able to direct the user to another page using the header() function. You should understand the difference between header() and include().

·  I recommend that you review the “Yougetta Coffee” challenges, and the latest “suggestion box” exercises.

·  Come to the review prepared to ask questions. There’s no lecture that day … so the time is there for you to ask questions that will benefit both you and the rest of the class.

·  Eric Koeck and the ITA team will hold review / study sessions. Times to be announced.