[Lee Murray]

16/01/2019 at 5:13 pm

The assignment is now up in the secure site.

Any thoughts? Overall I think it’s good, though I’m not keen on the logistics of having a part A and part B for two tasks (requiring part A to be handed in before they get to see part B).

I don’t want to go into solutions or anything because I think we were told not to divulge possible solutions last year due to this site not being secure, so I’m not sure how much to say…

But I’d like it if the entity occurrence diagram was editable.

Other than that I’m relatively happy with it (admittedly, my expectations were low).

[Stuart Walker]

17/01/2019 at 1:50 pm

Hi Lee, overall I thought the paper was not too bad… thought the question section 1 bii, that asks about generating 2 sql statements to produce forename and surname was a tad ambiguous. Surely this could be done in 1 statement? Apart from that thought it was alright.
Stuart.

[Lee Murray]

18/01/2019 at 9:04 am

I assumed it meant two SELECT statements, so that’s how I solved it. I doubt there would be a penalty for finding the correct answer with only one query (I hope!).

[Lee Murray]

18/01/2019 at 9:43 am

Oh, I just remembered one other thing I didn’t like about the assignment. The use of the word ‘further’ when referring to physical distance. I’m a stickler for ‘farther’.

[DCullen]

31/01/2019 at 11:23 am

If you have a look at the specimen coursework Task 1c (ii) you will see it is quite similar to this years 1 bii, that asks about generating 2 sql statements to produce forename and surname.

The specimen marking scheme is provided at the end of the document. Part of it says:

If the candidate implements the search using a sub-clause:
AND Drug.dosage = (SELECT MAX(Drug.dosage) FROM Drug;)
still award marks for:
• Query 1
• AND dosage =

So it seems to be be fine to do it in one query or two.

[Stuart Walker]

06/02/2019 at 11:24 am

DCullen,

Thanks for the input! Helps to put my mind at rest. I know it is only a couple of marks, but these could make the difference for some of my kids.

Cheers
Stuart

[Denis Soames]

19/02/2019 at 11:58 am

I apreciate the comment re last years task, I too was worries about pupils not doing in two selects, its seems unnecessary to force students to do it in two, unless the point is to give them permission to split the task up?

[Ronnie Ross]

06/03/2019 at 1:06 pm

I had recently completed the assignment with my class, generally felt it was a decent task overall.

However there is one part that is bothering me, and I am not sure if it is just me being dense and missing something, so I hope for some clarification.

The assignment program requires the conversion of a floating point number into an integer, rounded down.

In the arrangements, underneath the pre-defined functions section, it says “to convert floating-point numbers to integers”.

It does not state that the number must be rounded down when converted. VB rounds to the nearest integer, be it up or down, whereas C# rounds down.

So in order to achieve the rounding down, I showed them the Math.Floor() function. However I felt this shouldn’t be necessary, as the arrangements do not state that the pre-defined function used should be a rounding down one, only that the number is converted. Even in the one language (VB) this leaves several possible functions that can be used. I hadn’t demonstrated this function before the coursework, as, following the arrangements, I had only shown them how to convert from floating point to integer, not convert and round down.

I couldn’t see anything in the appendices to clarify this. Am I missing something glaringly obvious? It felt like the coursework assignment was assessing something that wasn’t explicitly in the arrangements, because the arrangements do not say “round down” or anything to that effect, only convert, but the task didn’t ask that pupils convert, they must convert and round down.

[lynn donald]

06/03/2019 at 1:45 pm

Hi Ronnie

I use the INT function to round down to a whole number in VB. INT returns the integer portion of a number.

For example: averageAge = INT(totalAge / 20)

Lynn