In my study for this one, I perused six past papers, and despaired at my inability to find a common thread linking the questions 1, nor any sort of cycle that might have been at hand. This lead me to worry that this very paper - my last this session - might have had an Original Question. [Cue some clichéd music.]
Well, it did have a previously unseen question (quite a shock to the system after all the identikit exams we've seen this year), about the differences between Object-Based and Top-Down design. I think I managed to bluster my way through it, with some vaguenesses about modularity and coupling.
The third question was rather kind for an SDI exam, in that it was solely dedicated to one topic - robustness. This wasn't too bad, although I wasn't sure whether to consider the chance of an END_ERROR being raised by the user pressing a key combination that I've forgotten (Ctrl-M or Ctrl-D, maybe?). I left this out, and am now wondering if I should have put it in. But how likely is it, really?
The second question (solely dedicated to design, no criticism) was a behemoth. A diary system was to be designed. Firstly, I wish I'd read that the Date Class was assumed - I mistakenly wrote one out. I really wanted to use OOP as well, but I couldn't think of a way to involve it, other than say that an appointment could be a tagged record, rather than a normal ADT, "in order to facilitate evolution". My structure diagram became so complicated that I've no idea whether I left out key functionality or not, but here's hoping....
Whew, that'll be all then.
Cheers,
Derek.
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