Open University - M362/M256 exams over

Exams finally over. I was a doofus and thought they were the coming Friday and Monday. I ended up with 4 nights for M362 and a weekend for M256 when I realised my mistake. I've no idea why, but I had the wrong date down on a bit of paper and I referred to the bit of paper whenever I wanted to work out how much longer I could procrastinate for.

Anyway, the both went ok in the end. I'll guess a Grade 1 pass for M256, and a borderline 1/2 for M362. It would be very nice indeed for that to be a 1, as then I can relax for my 3 remaining Level 3s. Otherwise I'll need to concentrate hard on one of them to get a Grade 1 pass - you need 60 points at Grade 1 in Level 3 courses for a first.

The past paper MCQ answers for M256, (Wednesday 17th October 2007 - M256/S) we reckoned to be:

1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
AD	BD	DE	BE	CD	AE	BDF	CE	BC	BF
11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	20
BE	CE	C	BD	ABF	BD	BE	AD	CE	C

5 - this is dumb, you read "an abstract class may have instances" and immediately think - "no way Hosé". But, in M256 parlance, they can have instances - these being instances of their concrete subclasses. Urgh. It's in the Glossary.

M362 (2008) was deemed fair by most people taking it. Some bombed and are expecting re-sits. I did Q13, which was a bold move. The paper is available now. I reckoned I would drop 5 or 6 marks on Q12, especially as I didn't like the last part one bit (security managers / RMI). So, I took Q13 - I liked the last bit on JAAS, but now I'm not so sure. I found the terms features and resources in parts a and c confusing - too vague. I guess it will be a grade 2. Widdle.

M256 (2008) was deemed unfair by most in the forum. A few people thought it went ok, I guess others are keeping quiet, not wanting to disturb the waters. The main complaints were the sheer volume of text you get for the main questions. They are pretty bulky, but most is just reference. Then folk didn't like the things you hand to copy out into your answer booklet and complete - a huge sequence diagram and a walk-through. I don't know if some people were using a ruler for their sequence diagrams. Don't, just scrawl it out. I ran out of room for mine. If your reading this with M256 approaching, then practice drawing a huge sequence diagram out on A4 - landscape, avoiding the edges (margins you can't write in). With 2 past papers available from the OU you should be in a better position to revise. I had a problem with Q23, I think there was a method missing in the protocol - so I had to make one up - a getter for something or other. I'll check when the paper comes out. I couldn't see another way of getting the information (alternative navigation of links, or cunning use of other methods), and the walk-through seemed to indicate that the thing was available without having to go via another object.