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CMMOOT:

Intranet Systems Development

School

Computing Science and Digital Media

Course

MSc Computing : Software Technology

MSc Computing: Software Technology with

Network Management

Year of Study

Postgraduate

Academic Year

20L2-20L3

Semester

Date

12 August 2013

Time

10.00

No. of Pages

(including cover)

13.00

Duration: 3 hours

Instructions to Candidates
Answer all FIVE questions
STUDENTS ARE NOT PERMITTED TO LOOK AT THE EXAMINATION PAPER UNTIL
INSTRUCTED TO DO SO.

SPECIAL STATIONERY
Lined Paper

Ru

Answer all FIVE questions

The early design stages of a web application can make use of Information
Architecture practices to inform the development of wireframes, mock ups
and eventually prototypes,
Answer the following:

(a)

What is the importance of Information Architecture?

(4)

(b)

Give two advantages that creation of a wireframe has over the

development of a prototype. Give one reason why the prototype
may be superior,
(6)

(c)

Implement the following wireframe interface using HTML5 (n.b. CSS

code not required) code. You should pay attention in particular to:

.
.
.

Correct HTML5 page structure

Appropriate nesting of major elements

Identifying elements with appropriate labels

(10)

-Site Header

Navigation Links

---

---ite Footer

2/...

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(r,

Visual aspects of a web application can be controlled using Cascading Style

sheets (CSS), which declare rules that are applied to HTML elements when
a web page is rendered by a browser.
Answer the following:

(a)

CSS uses a simple syntax with three main elements, Identify each
and label where they occur in a short piece of CSS code.

(6)

(b) In which way can CSS be included in HTML that violates good
separation of concerns? Provide a short example that illustrates this.

(4)

(c)

In Question 1 (C) a wireframe is presented, Write the CSS code

that will satisfy the following criteria:

(i)

Invert the Article Header colours such that foreground

white and the background is black

(ii)
(iii)
(iv)

Increase the Article Header font size to

is

2OOo/o

Set the Article Content to use the Arial font family

Layout the Article Header and Article Content as two-column
layout (n.b. do not worry about size, just float rules)

(2,2,2,4)

3/...

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K*

HTTP is the main method of communication between a web browser and a

web server. More recently, Ajax has provided improvements the

shortcomings of HTTP when building more sophisticated web applications.
Answer the following:

(a)

What did AJAX originally stand for? Why is it now referred

Ajax and provide an example to support your answer.

to

as

(4)

(b)

HTTP consists of a set of methods. Identify three HTTP methods

and provide a description of their typical usage,

(6)

(c)

To overcome the stateless nature of HTTP, Cookies and Sessions

have emerged as methods of storing state information between
HTTP requests.

(i)

(ii)

Provide a diagram for each method of storing state using:

a.

Cookies

b.

Sessions

Explain which method is superior in terms of security and why

this is the case.

(8,2)

4/...

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Kc

Structured Query Language (SQL) is the standard for defining the schema
of a database and querying relational databases, like MySQL, used by
most web applications.
Answer the following:

(a)

What does CRUD stand for? Provide an example snippet of SQL code
to illustrate each part of CRUD.

(s)

(b)

Describe how PHP integrates with MySQL using the "5 step model",
clearly identifying each step in your answer.

(s)

(c)

Given the following Entity Relationship Diagram (ERD) for a simple

polling application:

(i)

Write the SQL code required to create these database tables,

remembering to choose sensible data types and constraints.

(ii)

Write the SQL query that would return all Polls questions with
a date later then 24/05/20L3.
(8,2)

s/...

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(t'

PHP has become one of

the most dominant server-side web development

technologies used to build web applications.

Answer the following:

(a)

Identify three disadvantages that might occur when using PHP for
server side web development.
(6)

(b)

Provide two PHP snippets that illustrate super-global arrays used

when handling HTTP data sent to a PHP script.
(4)

(c)

PHP has built-in support for managing state during

interaction with a web application. Answer the following:

user's

(i)

What are the three main aspects of session management?

Provide a snippet of code to illustrate each,

(ii)

How is information accessed and stored during sessions?

Please refer both to the programming code and systems'
aspect,

(6,4)

END OF QUESTION PAPER

(.t,

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