CS 1520 – Summer 2009 – Review for Final Exam

Carefully read over all of the notes from our class meetings, BOTH from the PowerPoint slides (available on-line) and from class discussions and the whiteboard. If you missed any classes, it is NOT ENOUGH to just get the on-line notes -- get the notes taken in class from a fellow student as well.

Download, read, compile and execute all examples from my Web page. These examples demonstrate the material that was emphasized in class. You should understand every detail of these handouts, including the comments. You should understand their executions and be able to trace and/or code each of them. When running the programs, be sure to experiment. You can also learn a lot by making modifications to the programs and then examining their effects.

Some of the material in the text was emphasized in the class notes/handouts and some was not. I suggest reading everything in the text chapters listed below AFTER reading through the notes and handouts -- that way you will know what to emphasize.

Read the chapters below in the Sebesta textbook:

Chapters 2 and 3 for HTML and style sheets
Chapters 4, 5 and 6 for JavaScript / DOM
Chapter 7 for XML
Chapters 8, 9 for Perl (only up to what we covered in lecture)
Chapter 9 for CGI
Chapter 11 for PHP
Chapter 13 for MySQL
Chapter 16 for AJAX

plus summary and review sections for all relevant chapters

Also carefully read through all of the online references suggested in the class notes for PHP, MySQL, JavaScript, AJAX, DOM, XML and Perl.. Generally, look over the following sites for help with the languages: http://www.php.net/manual/en/ , http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/index.html , http://www.w3schools.com/js/default.asp , http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/AJAX , http://www.w3.org/TR/XMLHttpRequest/ , http://www.w3schools.com/htmldom/default.asp , http://www.w3schools.com/dom/default.asp , http://www.perl.com .

The Sebesta text also has some examples available. I have copied the zip file to the CS 1520 page. I recommend unzipping, looking over and trying these examples.

Read through and understand ALL notes and handouts from your recitation meetings.

Understand all of your assignments and how they relate to and demonstrate the material covered in lecture and recitation.

Look over your 2^nd quiz and its solution

Prepare for the exam by reading the definitions/syntax carefully, but also practice both running and writing PHP (with MySQL) and JavaScript (including AJAX) programs. Any programming on the exam will be fairly simple, but you need to use a language in order to understand it, so write as many small programs as you can. Even typing in the examples from the text (rather than just downloading them) will help you to understand the code better, since you will notice each line as you type it in.