974: Two down, two to go
I just got back from my exam, leaving almost 30 minutes early due to boredom, hunger, completeness and desire to see if DHL, who being the annoying people they are, have delivered my package. Of course, they came just after I had left, at 8.38am, (I left at about 8.15am for my exam) and thus, with no one else being up, my instructions I left to hand over my parcel (with a faulty TV tuner card) and receive their parcel (with a hopefully working TV tuner card) went on silent ears. Which is annoying, in the way only DHL seem to be. Although I do have to hand it to them, their re-delivery system is quick and painless, and hopefully it'll come tomorrow. I was planning on spending all day in the house in a last dash attempt to do some revision, so hopefully, I can hear from them! And maybe, just maybe, if all goes to plan, I'll get my hopefully working TV tuner card.
Regardless to say, the exam today wasn't too awful. I got the usual uneasiness when I saw people leaving 45 minutes in (but seriously, I don't understand how they did it and had a chance to check and correct so quickly) but it wasn't too bad. It was slightly different from every other exam in the fact it had FIVE possible questions (with three to do) rather than the usual FOUR. Which, I guess, is also a nice advantage. That on top of the topic being pretty much self-explanatory.
The first question was on keys, so squat easy. The second question was on relational algebra, and although it looked easy, it had something about "explaining the rules" of it - and I didn't know what exactly I was expected to put for that, so I skipped it and went on to 3. Which was about indices, what they were, what were the best ones for the given scenario, and then adding a new item to a B-Tree (which was fairly difficult, but with paper & pencil, I worked out). The final question 5 had what looked like a super piss-easy "what would this table look like if it were XML" question for 20%, but the others were "Advantages/Disadvantages" of relational over object-oriented and XML, and I thought, naw, forget it, yo' homes to Bel Air! I pulled up to the house about 7 or 8, And I yelled to the cabbie, yo' homes smell ya later' I looked at my kingdom, I was finally there, to sit on my throne as the Prince of Bel Air!
SO.... instead I decided to do question 4 - explaining why SQL wasn't strictly relational, examples of GROUP BY and HAVING, and then three fairly okay SQL queries to create. All in all, didn't seem so bad. My pen, as always, was the worst of it all! Constantly blotting all over my hands, and my face, and my ruler and UGH.
Still, two down, two to go.
Regardless to say, the exam today wasn't too awful. I got the usual uneasiness when I saw people leaving 45 minutes in (but seriously, I don't understand how they did it and had a chance to check and correct so quickly) but it wasn't too bad. It was slightly different from every other exam in the fact it had FIVE possible questions (with three to do) rather than the usual FOUR. Which, I guess, is also a nice advantage. That on top of the topic being pretty much self-explanatory.
The first question was on keys, so squat easy. The second question was on relational algebra, and although it looked easy, it had something about "explaining the rules" of it - and I didn't know what exactly I was expected to put for that, so I skipped it and went on to 3. Which was about indices, what they were, what were the best ones for the given scenario, and then adding a new item to a B-Tree (which was fairly difficult, but with paper & pencil, I worked out). The final question 5 had what looked like a super piss-easy "what would this table look like if it were XML" question for 20%, but the others were "Advantages/Disadvantages" of relational over object-oriented and XML, and I thought, naw, forget it, yo' homes to Bel Air! I pulled up to the house about 7 or 8, And I yelled to the cabbie, yo' homes smell ya later' I looked at my kingdom, I was finally there, to sit on my throne as the Prince of Bel Air!
SO.... instead I decided to do question 4 - explaining why SQL wasn't strictly relational, examples of GROUP BY and HAVING, and then three fairly okay SQL queries to create. All in all, didn't seem so bad. My pen, as always, was the worst of it all! Constantly blotting all over my hands, and my face, and my ruler and UGH.
Still, two down, two to go.