Computing Flashcards

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1
Q

What is a standard file format?

A

Is one that will open and display correctly on all platforms.

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2
Q

What is lossy compression?

A

Lossy compression techniques compress data with a certain amount of visual loss when restored. Audio, video and some imaging applications can tolerate loss and in many cases, it may not be noticeable to the human ear or eye.

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3
Q

What is lossless compression?

A

Lossless compression is a technique that decompressed data back to its original form without any loss. All compression methods used to compress text, databases and other business data are lossless.

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4
Q

Factors that affect the size of a sound file are:

A
  • The length of the recording - The longer the recording the more information there is to be stored
  • The sampling depth - The number of bits used to store a sound sample. The more bits used the better the sound quality, but greater the file size.
  • The sampling frequency - How many times per second that a sound is sampled. The more samples per second are taken the better the quality of the sound, but greater the file size.
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5
Q

What is an operating system?

A

An operating system is a large program which manages the hardware and software of the computer system.

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6
Q

What are the functions of an operating system?

A
  • Interpreting user commands: The computer may have a menu-drives or a command driven user interface and this is how the user can give commands.
  • Memory management: Allocates programs and data files to the space available in main memory.
  • Input/output.
  • File Management
  • Error reporting
  • Resource allocation
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7
Q

What is propietary software?

A

Is also known as ‘closed software’. It’s developed by companies who typically charge a license fee for the right to use their software.
(I.E: Microsoft office, Google earth, iOS, Skype)

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8
Q

What is open source software?

A

Open source software is developed, marketed and distributed by a community of individuals and is available for free.

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9
Q

What are some advantages of open source software?

A
  • It is free to use, distribute and change. It has lower costs, and in most cases this is only a fraction of the cost of their propietary counterparts.
  • It is more secure as the code is accessible to everyone. Anyone can fix bugs as they are found, and users do not have to wait for the next release. The fact that it is continuously analysed by a large community produces secure and stable code.
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10
Q

What are some disadvantages to open source software?

A
  • It may not always be straightforward to use. Open source operating systems like Linux cannot be learned in a day. They require effort and possibly training from your side before you are able to master them.
  • There is a shortage of applications that run both on open source and propietary operating systems; therefore, switching to an open source platform involves a compatibility analysis of all the other software used that run on propietary platforms (I.E, Much of Adobe’s design software is not available on Linux)
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11
Q

What is a meta tag?

A

Meta tags are used to specify page description, keywords, author of document, last modified and other metadata.

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12
Q

How would you do a compression calculation?

A

Step 1) Multiply the resolution, frame rate and bits per pixel together.

Step 2) Divide by 1024 until you get the lowest number possible (That is higher than 0).

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13
Q

What are some advantages of propierty software?

A
  • You will be able to take advantage of the software companies customer service department for troubleshooting and setup purposes.
  • Software is often very high quality as it has been developed by professional teams.
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14
Q

What are some disadvantages of propierty software?

A
  • You will usually have to pay for the software as the company that produced it will be trying to make a profit.
  • The software will not be adaptable; you cannot change it to meet your individual needs.
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15
Q

What is ‘portability’?

A

Portability is a measure of how easily an application can be transferred from one computer environment to another.

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16
Q

How do you reduce the size of a graphics file?

A

By cropping the image, lowering the resolution of changing the colour depth.

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17
Q

How do you reduce the size of a video file?

A

By trimming the length of the video, altering the resolution or reducing the frame rate.

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18
Q

What is a database driven website?

A

A database driven website is a web page that grabs information from a database and inserts that information into the web page each time it is loaded. If the information stored in the database changes the web page connected to the database will also change accordingly (and automatically) without human intervention.

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19
Q

What is client side scripting?

A

Client side scripts run on the client side of a client-server system. (I.E - On the World Wide Web, JavaScript scripts are used client-side because they are executed by your browser).

20
Q

What is a relational database?

A

A relational database is a database which contains more than one table. The tables are linked together by using primary and foreign keys.

21
Q

What are the advantages of using a relational database?

A

> Relational databases prevent unnecessary duplication of data.
Less time-consuming than a flat-file databse.

22
Q

Explain the difference between a flat database and a relational database.

A

Flat-file databases is just one table with lots of recprds. A relational database may have two or more tables with the records more organsied. (I.E In a library one table for the book, one for the library and one for the user). These tables are linked with primary and foreign keys.

23
Q

What is a primary key and what is it’s purpose in a database?

A

A primary key is a field in a table that contains a value that is unique for every record. It’s purpose is to ensure that every record is different and are used when linking tables together.

24
Q

What is a surrogate key and when are they used?

A

A surrogate key is a field in a table which has been created by the system to ensure
that a unique field exists for every record. A surrogate key is used instead of a primary
key if no existing field is suitable.

25
Q

What is a compound key and when is it used?

A

A compound key combines more than one field in order to make a unique key.
In some databases one field is not enough data to uniquely identify a record. In a pack of
cards, there are four different suits, hearts, diamonds, spades and clubs. For example,
in a pack one single primary key would not be able to identify each different card based
on the suit, or on the card value.

26
Q

What is a foreign key?

A

A foreign key is a field in a table that is the primary key of another table.

27
Q

In relational databases, what is a ‘one-to-one’ relationship. Give an example.

A

A one-to-one
relationship is when there are two tables, both having the same number of rows. One row from table 1 relates directly to one row in table 2. This could be relevant if you have two tables in a database, one for customer names and one for customer details.

28
Q

In relational databases, what is a ‘one-to-many’ relationship. Give an example.

A

In relational databases, a one-to-many relationship occurs when a parent record in one table can potentially reference several child records in another table. The important idea is that the child cannot have more than one parent record. EG | One dentist can have many patients, but many patients can only have one dentist.

29
Q

In relational databases, what is a ‘many-to-many’ relationship. Give an example.

A

The opposite of a one-to-many relationship is a many-to-many relationship, in which a child record can link back to several parent records. EG | Many pupils have many teachers and many teachers have many pupils.

30
Q

What is CSS?

A

Cascading Style Sheets allow web developers to alter the layout and appearance of their web pages.

31
Q

What are some of the advantages of CSS?

A

The advantages of CSS are:

• The layout of many documents or even an entire website can be controlled from
one style sheet, reducing the amount of code required for formatting.

• The developer gets a more precise control over layout than by using HTML tags.

• The developer can apply different layouts to different media types, screen or print
etc.

• Several different stylesheets can be used to change the look of a site according to
users’ preferences

32
Q

What is the structure of a piece of CSS code?

A

In CSS code there is a selector, a declaration and a value.
In the following code, the ‘p’ is the selector, the color and font-size are the attributes and the ‘red’ and ‘ 16px’ are the values. The code within the curly brackets ( { } ) is the declaration. After every value, there MUST be a semi-colon as shown below.

p {
color: red;
font-size: 16px;
}

33
Q

What are the three types of selectors in CSS? Give a short definition for each.

A

• Element selectors:

These directly affect an HTML tag of the same name, so they
are simply the name of the tag as a piece of text.

• ID selectors:
These start with a # symbol and will only affect an HTML tag where the ID attribute matches the text following the # symbol. They are normally only
used to affect one particular tag, so the ID should be unique to that tag.

•Class Selectors:

These start with a full-stop (.) 
and apply to HTML tags where the class attribute matches the text following the full-stop.  They are similar to ID selectors, but can apply to multiple HTML sections.
34
Q

What are the four stages in RAD?

A

The four stages in Rapid Application Development are:

  1. Requirements Planning phase
  2. User design phase
  3. Construction phase
  4. Cut over phase
35
Q

What does the requirements planning phase entail in RAD?

A

This is similar to the analysis stage but where
users, managers and IT staff discuss and agree on what they need, the project scope, its constraints and the system requirements.

36
Q

What does the user design phase entail in RAD?

A

During this phase the developers work with users to translate their requirements into prototypes of the different systems required. This is a continuous interactive process that allows users to understand, modify, and eventually approve a working model of the system that meets their needs

37
Q

What does the construction phase entail in RAD?

A

This phase is similar to the implementation and testing
stages of the waterfall model, but users continue to be involved and can still suggest changes or improvements as the software is built.

38
Q

What does the cut over phase entail in RAD?

A

In this phase, the software is installed and tested on the new system and user training and maintenance starts.

39
Q

What is RAD?

A

Rapid Application Development means that the users should be involved at all stages of the development process and that changes to the design can be made at any time throughout the life of the project. It also means that the development process is faster
and more flexible.

40
Q

What’s an example of client side scripting on a website?

A

Addition of products into a ‘basket’ when shopping. Your name on a website after inputting login details (I.E: “Welcome, Jordan.”)

41
Q

What’s an example of server side scripting on a website?

A

A bank showing you the money in your account or a website automatically logging you out after a period of inactivity.

42
Q

What is parallel processing?

A

Parallel processing is when they are two processors working simultaneously to complete tasks.

43
Q

Why can’t we just ‘speed up’ the one processor and remove the need for another processor?

A

Because of the size of the processors they would heat up too quickly due to the amount of work they’re having to complete. Eventually melting them and causing permanent damage to the processor.

44
Q

How can processor performance be bettered by using cache?

A

Cache memory is a faster kind of memory which stores copies of data from frequently used main memory locations. The processor will use various techniques to improve performance using the cache including reading ahead in a program to load the cache with instructions which are likely to be needed soon.

45
Q

What is cache memory?

A

Cache memory is a faster kind of memory which stores copies of the data from frequently used main memory locations.