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Web Component Certification (OCEJWCD)

SCWCD Exam Simulator

Duran Harris

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posted 15 years ago

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Hi all,

I've been considering making an SCWCD exam simulator.What I'm considering is taking the HFSJ 1st edition mock exam and creating a JSP which will have these question/answers hardcoded into it.Then I would share the JSP and the classes to anyone who wants it!And then theres no problem with multithreading if everyone runs it on their own tomcat.Also, please speak up if this is infringing on copyright......
Please peruse the following:
-------------------------------------Question.java

And then the 1st web page,will create 69 question objects using <% scripting %>.I will hardcode all the questions into a Java array,and all the answers into a Java array.

------------------------------------------test.jsp:

public static answerCount=0;//Will be equal to manualAnswers length.
String[] manualQuestions={//I manually insert the questions here}
String[] manualAnswers={//I manually insert the answers here,because I will create the Question objects
//in loop I will assign 5 entries to each question,questions with less answers will have blank strings inserted}
String[] correctNumbers={//will have 69 elements,each of which will contain a number ie:135 indicating which of the answers are correct}

out.write("<form method=\"POST\" action=\calculateScore.jsp\">");

//Create a string array of 5 elements to contain each question's possible answers
for(int y=0;y<=68;y++)
{
for(int z=0;z<=4;z++)
{
 String[] temp+=manualAnswers[answerCount];
answerCount++;

}

Question a=new Question(manualQuestions[y],temp,correctNumbers[y]);
//Now I invoke my overloaded toString(int id)
out.write(a.toString(y));
}
out.write("<input type=\"SUBMIT\" value=\"Finish Test?\"/></form>");
%>
//At this point the page should display 69 checkboxes.....

</head>
<body>
</body>
</html>

---------------------------------------calculateScore.jsp

This is what the POST data should look like:

1=2,3
2=1
3=1,2,3
4=2
5=1,2,3,4

Where the parameter names represent question numbers and the parameter values represent the choices that the test-taker selected for that question.

Then I will hardcode an array into this page which will compare the POST data to the hardcoded array and calculate a score.
And VOILA!
An SCWCD simulator!
Anybody want to volunteer to help hardcode the questions/answers???

===>SCJP 1.5(72%)<===
==>SCWCD1.5(76%)<===

William Brogden

Author and all-around good cowpoke

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posted 15 years ago

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MANY people, including me, have written exam simulators. I have writen 4 (or is it 5) separate versions - see my web site for recent examples.

Let me suggest that a much more worthy approach is to write a general framework for presenting and grading questions that uses a general approach to scripts of questions. That way one application can support many different practice tests. Personally I favor XML as the script storage medium. If I could give one single piece of advice, it is "make authoring tests easy"

Doing it your way would be the exact antithesis of what Web Component design is all about.

Bill

Christophe Verré

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posted 15 years ago

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I'm voting for the "No script in JSP campaign".

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Paul Anilprem

Enthuware Software Support

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posted 15 years ago

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Developing a simulator would be good learning exercise, though you might want to implement the functionality that Bill suggested "make authoring tests easy" to open source simulator like Inquisition instead of starting afresh. You might also want to consider that there is actually a dearth of quality questions rather than simulators.

We have written all our mock exams using Enthuware Test Studio Editor, which is available for free. It allows authors to focus on questions instead of delivery mechanism by making it very easy to write and maintain questions. It provides the following features -

Platform Independent - Since it is a Java application, it can be used on practically any platform. You can start creating a question bank on one platform and edit it on another. The users of the question bank can use it on any platform as well.
Multiple Question Types - You can create several types of questions such as Multiple Choice, Fill in the blanks, Drag and Drop, and True/False.
Highly Customizable - It allows you to configure pretty much all aspects of a Mock Exam. Several parameters such as Time per question, passing marks, Number of correct options can be set for an individual Test as well as for a group of Tests.
Study Material - Besides questions, you can include any kind of study material such as pdf, doc, or image files and URLs for references.
Security - It allows multiple authors to work on a question bank. Each Author gets his own login to the Question Bank. It can also encrypt the Question Bank using your own keys (which it helps you generate).
Licensing - You can enforce licensing on the Question Bank, which means that a user will be able to access it only if he has a valid license. A license cannot be modified by the user.
Updates - It automatically notifies the users of any updates to the Question Bank as well as to the application itself.
Community Features - It allows users of your Question Bank to chat among themselves and with you. It allows users to report their scores on mock as well as real exam.

There are many more features that make the life of a Mock Exam vendor easy. We are continuously working on making it better, so let us know if you have any suggestiong to make it better.

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Duran Harris

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posted 15 years ago

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Okay great...Enthuware test studio it is!!

Regardless of how lame the code was...The point was to make the HFSJ 1st edition mock available in a format that is enjoyable/easy to take the test in.

===>SCJP 1.5(72%)<===
==>SCWCD1.5(76%)<===

Ulf Dittmer

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posted 15 years ago

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Be sure to check with the authors of those questions that it's cool to distribute them - they are copyrighted.

Duran Harris

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posted 15 years ago

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Yes will PM them...as soon as I figure out how to use the test studio.

===>SCJP 1.5(72%)<===
==>SCWCD1.5(76%)<===

Paul Anilprem

Enthuware Software Support

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posted 15 years ago

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Yes will PM them...as soon as I figure out how to use the test studio.

A similar quest happened for SCJP mock exams as well some time back. Not sure what happened to it. Please see this: https://coderanch.com/t/417876/Programmer-Certification-SCJP/certification/Looking-free-mock-exams-with

Regarding how to use ETS, I am quoting what I wrote in the above mentioned thread -

You can use ETS Editor to create your own question bank (i.e. a .ets file. This .ets file is the entity that you can license/sell) -
0. Download and install ETS Editor from ETS Editor page
1. Using File->New, create an empty ets file.
2. ETSEditor will show the nodes such as Sections(aka exam objectives or topics), Toughness Levels, Questions, etc.
3. Right click on any node to add Sections or toughness levels or questions.
4. If you are writing new question from scratch, use New->Question (or right click on Questions node) to add a new empty question. This will show you a question editor where you can specify problem statement, code, exibit, images, explanations etc.
5. you already have written questions in some format, you can let ETS Editor import them by writing a simple Java class that reads your questions file, and returns POJOs. Ue Load Questions menu item to specify your class file and your datafile, and ETS Editor will import the questions in its own format.
Send me an email at support AT enthuware DOT _com if you need help with this.

Regarding Licensing -
1. ETS uses publickey-private key encryption. It has inbuilt facility to let you can encrypt your .ets file using your own keys.

2. Once the file is encrypted, it cannot be opened by ETS Editor without access to the keys and it cannot be opened by ETS Viewer without a license that is given by you. So regular users can only view your questions, that too with a valid license (if you so desire). They cannot modify it.

3. You can either charge for a license or give it out for free. If you do not want to generate individual licenses (like we do for our question banks, see ETS Question Banks), you can disable the license validation. You do not have to pay us anything even if you charge for your question bank.

Again, let me know if you need any help on this.

ETS Editor and ETS Viewer are both free to use. But they are not open source and they are not copyleft.

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Paul Anilprem

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posted 15 years ago

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BTW, where are Reply with Quote, Edit, and Delete buttons?? I don't see them in the post.

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Christophe Verré

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posted 15 years ago

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BTW, where are Reply with Quote, Edit, and Delete buttons?? I don't see them in the post.

Did you scroll to the right ? They may be hidden because of the width of the first post .

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Duran Harris

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posted 15 years ago

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I sent Bert a PM.Should be certified within a week,then I can make the test!!

===>SCJP 1.5(72%)<===
==>SCWCD1.5(76%)<===

Ulf Dittmer

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Christophe Verré wrote:They may be hidden because of the width of the first post .

Fixed.

Duran Harris

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posted 15 years ago

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Once I have questions in the bank,how do I try to take a test??(I only made 3 so far!)

===>SCJP 1.5(72%)<===
==>SCWCD1.5(76%)<===

Paul Anilprem

Enthuware Software Support

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posted 15 years ago

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Duran Harris wrote:Once I have questions in the bank,how do I try to take a test??(I only made 3 so far!)

To be able to take a test, you have to configure a test in ETS Editor. The configuration is stored in the ets file.

To take the test, you need to open the ets file that you created using ETS Editor in ETS Viewer.

You may send me the ets file and I can help you with configuring the test.

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