Wednesday, July 28, 2010

The in-basket 5

Until now, I've been concentrating on writing about the exam program which a user will run. This program outputs a text file containing pertinent information about the exam - the user's name, date of birth, date of exam, exam name - as well as the values generated whilst operating the program - opening and closing of messages, message text, etc. Today I'm going to write a little about importing this text file into the database.

But first: I deleted the dll code from one of my computers before I realised that I had not backed up this code. So I had to spend a certain amount of time recreating the changes necessary to enable the exam program to read its data from a dll. Whilst doing so, I noticed that there were still a few little bits and pieces to correct or improve, so I corrected and/or improved. I also religiously backed up.

Adding the import code to the existing results program was fairly simple as I have already done this with five or six other programs. True, the import code has to be tailored to the format of the import file, but most of this is boilerplate code. I discovered that I had to add a new field to the 'exams' table in the database, in which the dll name of the exam is stored, but this was a minor incovenience. Otherwise, writing the import code was straightforward and it worked (almost) correctly the first time. The only thing which needed fixing was reading the final line of the import file, which showed when the user finished the exam.

I will be introducing the new version of the programs into the work environment in the next few days. I understand that a few people are being tested with it today, but hopefully there will be more in the near future. The OP is quite enthusiastic about this exam as it enables her and her staff to widen their horizons regarding their customers, allowing the OP to enter the field of human resource testing and head hunting.

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