M359: Was it worth it?

The results for M359 have just been released and I got a grade 3 (67%), this being my lowest grade over the 4 years that I have studied with the OU so far.  To say I am disappointed would be an understatement especially as I obtained an overall score for my assignments of 94% and spent a month revising for the exam.

I know I have an issue with exams but I strongly feel that the layout for the M359 exam had a detrimental effect on my final result.  This appears to be the opinion of a number of other students who also got high assignment scores but were let down by the exam.

With only 2 courses remaining I am still in with a chance of getting a 1st for my degree (according to the online degree classification calculator, Leningrad), it just means that I am going to have to work extra hard as I will require distinctions for both of the courses.  If I slip up on either I will probably end up with a 2.1 classification.

M359: Ahhhhhhhhhh!!!

The course result for M359 should by available by the 14th Dec, and for previous years results have sometimes been released 1 or 2 days earlier.  So there I' am checking my student home page every hour to see if the result for M359 has been released when I notice "Your course result should be available by Friday 21 December 2007".  No explanations as to why, and I now have to wait an extra week.  As a fellow student pointed out, perhaps this is the final errata for the course, with the final results placed in an appendix at the end of our course record page.

M359: Exam

Tuesday last week (9.Oct) I took the M359 exam.  I haven't written about it until now as I came away from the exam very unhappy.

The reason for this was the layout of the exam paper.  Although I was aware that for the 12 short questions we had to place our answers in the exam booklet itself in spaces provided directly after each question, I did not appreciate what a pain this would be.  Each question tended to be a piece of description followed by 2 or 3 sub-questions, and the problem lay in if the question stretched over more than one page.  This meant that I had to keep flipping backwards and forwards between pages, which was very time consuming.  The worst culprits were questions 6, 7 and 8, as each of these questions referred to an appendix at the end of the exam booklet.

I am not the only one who feels this way about the exam paper, as there has been a general outcry from a lot of students concerning the layout, with a number of us making official complaints.

In conclusion the layout of the exam paper made a stressful situation even more stressful, wasted time and has cost me marks.  I now just have to wait until the 14.Dec to find out what my final grade will be.

M359: Possible Exam Strategy

On Sunday morning at the M500 Revision weekend Stuart Hutchison (our tutor for the weekend) discussed with us a possible exam strategy, and this is detailed below.

Note:  It is up to the individual how they use the following information; I am only documenting it as I believe some people might find it of use.

Format
2 part exam, with 3 hours allowed.

Part 1:  12 short questions worth 5 marks each, giving a total of 60% of the overall exam mark.  This equates to 108mins for part 1 with 9mins per question.

Part 2:  2 out of 3 long questions worth 20 marks each, giving a total of 40% of the overall exam mark.  This equates to 72mins for part 2 with 36mins per question.

Breakdown (and possibly what could be expected)
Stuart has based this breakdown on his experience of tutoring M358 and reviewing the M359 sample paper.

Part 1:
Q1., Q2.  Warm-up questions, normally quiet easy i.e. “Describe the differences between data and information”.
Q3.  Entity – Relationship Diagram to Relational Model.
Q4.  Relational algebra.
Q5.  Normalization.
Q6.  SQL – Code supplied, what does it do / correct the mistakes.
Q7.  SQL – Write some SQL from scratch.
Q8.  SQL – procedures, triggers, cursors, views.
Q9.  Entity Relationship Model – Revise / update.
Q10.  De-normalization, complex data.
Q11.  Data warehousing.
Q12.  XML.

Part 2:
Q13.  Entity Relationship Model to Relational Model (including relational algebra).
Q14.  SQL / Restructuring / Normalization / Access control.
Q15.  Sub-typing / Entity Relationship Models / Populating a database.

Revision Strategy
A high percentage of the exam appears to be based on SQL and data modelling, therefore by using the following strategy a student could potentially expect to get a good overall mark for the exam.

1.  SQL – A must.
2.  Data modelling – Entity Relationship Models.
3.  Relational algebra – borderline effort.
4.  Normalization / de-normalization – borderline effort.

Block 1 – skim.
Block 2 – learn well.
Block 3 – the bible, a must.
Block 4 – skim.
Block 5 – section 1 skim.

Conclusion
By concentrating their revision on blocks 2 and 3 (especially block 3) a student should be able to do enough in the exam to get a good mark.

One final exam tip ;)  “don’t think as thinking costs time”  In other words do not waste time on questions you will struggle with, move onto what are the easy questions for you.

M359: M500 Revision Weekend (part 2)

Sunday 16th

Today was very similar to yesterday.  2 sessions each comprising of a short lecture followed by answering a selection of questions.  The only difference with yesterday is that Stuart also did a session on exam strategy (see follow-up posting).

Session 4 (SQL) covered:
Cursors
Sub-queries
Views
Handling NULL
Keys
Data insertion
Queries
Wildcards
Group By
Ordering results
Joins
SET operations
Access control

Session 5 covered:
Distribution models
Distribution architectures
Technology drivers
Technology terminology
Multi-dimensional models
Information integration
Markup fundamentals
XML document structure
XML versus relational data
Embedded SQL concepts
Embedded SQL Statements
ODBC
JDBC – executing SQL

The weekend has proved very useful as it has highlighted to me where my weak areas are and given me some clear ideas as to how to proceed.  My thanks goes out to Stuart Hutchison, a most excellent tutor.

M359: M500 Revision Weekend

The M500 revision weekend is proving very useful. Our tutor is Stuart Hutchison of region 9. Stuart over a period of time has compiled a long list a questions and solutions to aid in revision for M359, and is using extracts from this list to aid in our revision (see below). I am finding them very useful as they are helping me identify my weak areas.

If you want to get hold of Stuart for further details on his questions and solutions he can be contacted on stuart.hutchison at btopenworld.com

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Friday 14th

Well here we are Aston Uni for the start of the M500 revision weekend. There’s 16 students taking the M359 strand and our tutor is Stuart Hutchison. This evening’s session covered Block 1, with Stuart doing some lecturing and then passing out some questions (which were a selection from a long list of questions he has compiled). These questions are proving very useful and informative. For me they are certainly highlighting areas where I need to pay extra attention.

The sorts of questions being:
Q3. Data Storage
List some fundamental problems associated with file-based data storage.

Q7. Database Concepts & Terminology
Complete each of the following boxes – which represent the 3-tier architecture of a typical DBMS.

After the evening session we spent a couple of hours at the “Sack of Potatoes”, the local public house, followed by a couple more drinks at the ABS bar, to drown our sorrows over England being whitewashed by South Africa.

Saturday 15th

The day panned out as Session 2, lunch and then session 3.

Session 2 covered:
CDM basics
ERD basics
Relational structure
Relational operations
Relational constraints

Session 3 covered:
Normal forms
Functional dependency
Design considerations
Normalization concepts
Normalization
Complex data
De-normalization

Once again Stuart used questions from the long list of questions that he has compiled, to aid in getting across the essence of the subject.

The primary thing I learnt today was to not speed read the questions, but to read them and then read them again. For example I kept mistaking the word "data" for "database".

M359: Revision

Having just recently come back from a glorious 2 week holiday in Italy I am finding it difficult to get back into the groove.  With the exam for M359 looming (09.Oct) I have now made a start on my revision, with my plan being to cover a block a week.  I still have not completed TMA04 but am now treating it as a revision aid rather than worrying about what final assessment score I might get.  Also I have decided not to bother doing question 4 as this covers topic 2 of block 5 and therefore will not be tested in the exam.  So apart from going through my notes, making new ones, and re-reading the course text, I will be meeting up with friends who are on the course as well and also attending the M500 Revision Weekend at Aston University, Birmingham.

 

My only concern is that I start MU120 on the 29.Sept, with a CMA to submit by 11.Oct.  This means that for a week prior to the exam I am going to have to split my time.  Hopefully the prep material for MU120 want be to complicated.

M359: TMA03 - Result

Last night, at 23:40, I got my result back for TMA03.  Although it wasn't 100% like TMA02 it was still in the high 90's, so am rather pleased.

This does present me with another problem though and it is one that I have experienced with other courses.  How do I do well in the exam.  For all my courses so far, except for 1, I have got a grade 2 although my TMA scores have been grade 1 standard.  I really let myself down at exam time.  It's not as though I don't revise for the exams, it's just that I have difficulty in remembering certain things such as lists.  This results I believe from my job in that I work for a small company and have to cover all aspects of I.T. and Computing.  So for a 3 month stint I might be doing ASP.NET programming and then not touch it for another year.  If I then need to do more ASP.NET I tend to refer back to previous work, text books and the Net.  I have termed this as "Use and Forget".  This issue has manifested itself in the courses that I have done, for example with M359 I fully understood blocks 1, 2 and 3, and the concepts involved, with this being reflected in both my scores and my tutors' comments, but now looking back I can't remember the nitty-gritty such as "list the enduring issues in data management" from block 1 without continuously referring back to the text.  This means that I am still hunting for the revision / memory technique that suits me best.

M359: TMA03

Have just submitted TMA03 of M359.  This has been or rather felt like quiet a long slog, but perhaps it's because I had the exam for M263 half-way through the TMA which meant that there was a bit of a gap after starting it due to revision for M263.

Must admit at the moment I am feeling the mid course blues, although now the TMA has been submitted I hope that I can re-motivate myself and get back into the swing of things.

M359: Block 3 Ex 5.13 - Flawed?

IMHO the solution (page 211) provided for exercise 5.13 (page 117) of block 3 is flawed for a specific set of circumstances.

Scenario
If the textbook table has a number of text books recorded for a specific course prior to the constraint (solution 5.13) being added, then once the constraint is added no text books will be able to be INSERT'd or UPDATE'd for any course not just the course where the number of recorded text books exceeds 5.

Example
For the following table:
bookcode,title,                                 author_name,       no_pages,course_code
'65281', 'Beginning Syntax',                    'Kershaw, J.',     247,     'c2'
'12953', 'Grammatical Structures',              (NULL),            258,     'c2'
'63948', 'Interpreting Semantics',              'Hyde, E.',        (NULL),  'c4'
'73642', 'The Semantics of Romance Languages',  'Jane Hanley',     (NULL),  'c4'
'65284', 'A First Course In Logic',             'Jerry Maxwell',   115,     'c5'
'65285', 'More Logic',                          'Jerry Maxwell',   210,     'c5'
'65290', 'Even More Logic',                     (NULL),            (NULL),  'c5'
'65291', 'A First Course In Magic',             'Jerry Maxwell',   115,     'c5'
'65292', 'A First Course In Poker',             'Jerry Maxwell',   115,     'c5'
'65293', 'A First Course In Distilling Whiskey','Jerry Maxwell',   115,     'c5'
'38572', 'Practical Pragmatics',                'Christine Davies',320,     'c7'
'93881', 'Advances in Pragmatics',              'Farmer, S.J.',    (NULL),  'c7'

Note that course 'c5' has 6 text books recorded.

Now the constraint (solution 5.13) is added:
ALTER TABLE textbook
   ADD CONSTRAINT max_5_textbooks CHECK (
          5 >= ALL (SELECT COUNT(*)
                    FROM   textbook
                    GROUP BY course_code));

Both of the following queries will break the constraint with SQLAnywhere generating a "Constraint 'max_5'_textbooks' violated:" error message, even though the first query relates to course 'c2' which only has 2 text books recorded and IMO should not break the constraint:
INSERT INTO textbook
    VALUES ('65282', 'Ending Syntax', 'Jerry Maxwell', 115, 'c2');

UPDATE textbook
   SET title = 'A First Course In SQL'
 WHERE bookcode = '65291';

Solution
The following is my solution, which not only covers the requirements specified by the exercise but also for the above scenario:
ALTER TABLE textbook
  ADD CONSTRAINT max_5_textbooks CHECK (
         NOT (course_code =ANY(SELECT t.course_code
                               FROM   textbook t
                               GROUP BY t.course_code
                               HAVING COUNT(t.course_code)>= 5)));

For the above 2 queries (the INSERT and the UPDATE queries) the INSERT will work and the UPDATE will fail, which is as expected.

OU: Update

Well it’s been just over a month since my last blog entry, so I thought I had better give an update on what has happened recently.

The reason for the large gap between entries has been due to me revising for the M263 exam, which took place on Monday (11.Jun). The exam was split into 2 parts, with part 1 being 14 short questions and part 2 being a choice of 2 of 4 long questions. Part 1 seemed to sail-by and until I hit question 13 I thought that I would have plenty of time for the long questions. But question 13 was to do with Proof, and this particular subject has been the only one in the course that I have not been able to get to grips with. After making several failed attempts at answering the question I thought I had better move on, and it was at this point I realised that I only had 70mins left to complete part 2. No worry that’s the amount of time the course team reckoned that we should take to answer part 2. Yet there are 4 questions, each taking up an A4 sheet, to read through before choosing which 2 to do. I dived straight into the database question, and got that completed in 35mins, although I missed part b because it wasn’t database related. I then started the second long question, and with out reading any of the other questions I went for the one that contained some programming. Managed to get the 2 implementations completed (a standard function and a recursive function), albeit I was running out of time fast and my hand writing was getting sloppier and sloppier. Whilst the papers were being collected I managed to top up points to the parts of questions that I had missed and unfortunately even if I get all my answered questions correct I will be just under the 85% needed for a distinct, so therefore I am now hoping for a grade 2.

Prior to the exam I had the final TMA for M263 to complete, which did slow down my M263 revision a bit, but it was worth it as I managed to get 85% even though I didn’t complete it all due to the Proof questions.

With regards to M359, I basically had put this on hold except for completing TMA02 (got a mind-blowing 100%), attending 2 evening tutorials and arranging a self-help group meeting (30.Jun). Now I have to get back into M359, but at least I can give it 100% of my time as opposed to having to split the time between both M359 and M263.

Yesterday I found out that I should get my final result for M253 on Friday 22.Jun. It will be nice to finally find out what I got, which is hopefully a pass.

Apart from a busy month OU wise, as a birthday treat for my wife, we went to Le Mans for the day on the 20.May for the French round of the MotoGP. Even though it rained during the main race and took us 3:30hrs to get out of Le Mans, we had a very enjoyable day.

M359: A Lack Of Response!

Having just started Block 3 “The database language SQL” I am really enjoying M359. Yet there is one aspect that is really frustrating and that is the lack of response within the M359 FirstClass conferences from OU staff (i.e. the course team, tutors and conference moderators). A number of messages have been posted from students where a response from the OU staff would have helped a lot but none has appeared.

For example:

1. There is a query concerning Q1 of TMA02 dating back to 08.Apr, and yet no response has been supplied from the OU staff;
2. I posted a message on the 17.Apr asking “How comparable is section 5 (Normal forms) of block 2 with what is taught for M263 unit 11 (Databases) section 4 (Normal forms)?”. Yet again no response from the OU staff;
3. Yesterday I posted a question, “For M263 if we want to say that B does not determine A we write it as B /~> A. Is there an equivalent in M359?”. I am not going to hold my breath.

Although this is a level 3 course and we are expected to do a lot of thinking for ourselves, this is the first presentation of M359 and for some of the students this is their first OU course. Therefore I am finding the lack of response very poor.

M359: TMA01 Result

Got my result back this evening for M359 TMA01. 98% and I am really pleased especially as I thought that I would loose a substantial amount of marks for question 1 at least.

I have made a start on TMA02 and managed to completed question 1.

By the way I forgot to mention that a couple of weeks ago I received "Block 3 The database language SQL" in the post. The pdf version does not appear to be available for download yet.