AQA Computing CPT 1+2....How did u find the exam?

I personally thought CPT 1 was a really good paper, i got most things apart from question 5 which was the ASCII question.

But CPT 2 was really really hard espcially the last question.

Reply 1

thomas49th

er you did the old syllabus then.

the last question on CPT2 wasn't too bad. However, I had to really force myself to revise the alogrithms for sequential files.

CPT1 was ok. The things I didn't like about CPT1 was the 3rd question being 7 marks and the http://xyzcollege/index.htm

i put xyzcollege stands for server name, but I'm not sure it's right!?

Reply 2

LozH

Didn't do Unit 1 but the CPT2 paper was ok, not sure how well I did though. Answered the last question but not sure if it was correct :o:

Couple of questions:
The one about data integruity ? Could that be defined as data becoming corrupt.

The one about files, records and fields ? How did you all answer that ?

The one about seconday file storage ? Is that devices such as devices such as external hard disks, internal hard disks. I know seconday file storage is storage not directly accessible to the CPU but I didn't really know how to answer the question :/

Also, the one about sending a letter instead of an email - I put sending a card along with the letter which cannot be sent via texts or emails. Not sure if that will get me a mark.

Reply 3

muz379

i found the cpt1 paper ok as well i got a B first time around anyway so if i dont do better it wont be the end of the world
one that i found hardest was probably jobs of network adaptor or advantages of network

Reply 4

thomas49th

The one about seconday file storage ? Is that devices such as devices such as external hard disks, internal hard disks. I know seconday file storage is storage not directly accessible to the CPU but I didn't really know how to answer the question :/

i found it hard to answer. went along the lines of allows a permanent storage of data so programs can use/save data/varaibles for use in the future

allows users to save data perminatly. but with these questions i always feel like im repeating myself.

i despised the first 4 questions. email text letter and phone. to waffely and ambiguous.

Reply 5

thomas49th

one that i found hardest was probably jobs of network adaptor or advantages of network

that pissed me off a bit aswell

Reply 6

hellokittty

the way they were asking the database question ut was really confusing.what did u guys write answer for that.

Reply 7

Gallium

i found everything in comp2 easy except for the logic diagram i reckon i got around 40 out of 60.

i probably lost some marks on the last pages

Reply 8

MonkeyMajik

This CPT 2 was surprisingly harder than some of the past papers in my opinion. In the relational database question i mentioned that the file would be the planets file, the records were the names of each planet and the fields were the facts about each planet such as the mean orbit (mentioned in the question).

When the question asked about the entity in either table 1 or 2 i wrote down the name of table such as PlanetaryBody.

I think data integrity refers to the correctness of data. So for example if you input data into a computer incorrectly this would be a breach of data integrity.

Weirdly, I feel pretty confident about the pseudocode question at the end @_@.

Reply 9

gnoze5

Hey,

I think CPT1 was a pretty fair paper compared to past year exams. CPT2 was a bit too descriptive type, which is always dangerous because the logic in these people's minds is strange, rather than knowing and understanding things you have to memorize their twilight zone way of seeing computing concepts.

either way I think I did well in both and will get the As. (And I have no excuse I have worked in the IT sector for a bit, server adminining and software development, doing A-levels to go into a second degree in Economics in a good school)

specifics...

the question on the databases was indeed vague, they were no clear for the primary key and foreign key if they wanted the field name or an actual value( I develop databases, and I didnt get what they wanted). There was a clear mistake in the data type question, were you had to pick from a table data types, the last one was actually and Array, but there was no Array on the list only real, and thats probably what they meant, an Array of real, i put real down and wrote a note on that. The pseudocode at the end of the second paper, as always, made no sense whatsoever, I finished the exam in around 40 minutes, rested for a bit and then went on to do that question, after a lot of dumbing down I sort of found a logic to it( I code, in C, Ruby, Perl), one thing that helped me was that two files were being interacted with, the master file and the new master file, one of them was open for read and the other for write, so anything that had write and then an empty space could only mean new master file, from then on i understood sort of what their logic was.

The network card question is stupid, and is bound to go wrong. Its not clear what they want and its not the first time the question comes out in an exam, either way i think i did fine for that too.

ill come back with other things as i remember.

i hope the post doesnt sound arrogant, im just being honest...

Reply 10

golddaytonas

i think cpt2 shud hav much lower boundries then usual, it was silly

Reply 11

muz379

thomas49th

that pissed me off a bit aswell

i got to likee 3 advantages and started strugling to find more
as for nic jobs ive never done that before i dont remember being taught it

Reply 12

thomas49th

i thought uniquely identify each computer one the network (you know like by a MAC addy)
and connects computer to other devices on the network (ie printers)

i didn't get taught that, I had to learn it from other papers :\