Online Quiz Application
Running the project
Special Features
Lessons Learned
User Guide
Page Flow
Source Code
Deploying the application
Project: Online Quiz application.
This three tier web application was
coded using the NetBeans 4.0 Java IDE, J2SE 1.4, and ObjectStrore
6.1.2. The application uses JSP pages for the presentation tier,
a Java servlet for the middle (logic) tier, and the ObjectStore object
oriented database for the third tier.
A working version of the application is completely contained in the
file Quiz.war. To run the application you need Java 1.4, an Apache/Tomcat web server, and ObjectStore installed and running on the same machine. Simply copy the Quiz.war file to the
.../tomcat/webapps/ directory and restart Tomcat. The application
should then be accessible by browsing to http://[host or IP]:[Tomcat
port]/Quiz/ (example: http://localhost:8084/Quiz/).
When the application is run for the first time a database file
(quiz.odb) is created in .../tomcat/webapps/Quiz/. The database
is created with a default administrative user that you will use to
access the instructor interface of the application. The
administrative user credentials are:
User ID: admin
Password: admin
There are also two test students that are automatically populated:
User ID PWD Name
mm
mm Mohammad Meah
mark mark
Mark Jones
Login knows if you are student or admin.
Name of user appears in header
'Administrator' appears in header when logged on as 'admin'
Administrator can:
Add new students (default password for
new students is their User ID)
Can create a question bank by adding,
updating, and deleting questions
Can create two types of questions, True/False and Multiple Choice
Create quizzes from the question bank
Create multiple quizzes
Assign quizzes to students
view quizzes
Students can:
take quizzes
view their grades
Quizzes are graded immediately
With more time the plan was to
implement a change password page, the ability to sort and create
quizzes based on the book, chapter, and section information recorded
for each question. Reports for the instructor that show grades by
student and a report that shows statistics on how often each question
is answered correctly.
Lessons Learned:
Edit the ANT script in NetBeans to run
persistent classes through the ObjectStore postprocessor during the
project build process
Use ObjectStore classes such as com.odi.util.OSHashtable instead of
java.util.Hashtable so that our classes can be made persistence capable
Though the 'Gradebook' example uses a client/server piece to
communicate with the database we found that this step is not needed if
ObjectStore is on the same machine as the web server.
It is useful to implement the Cloneable interface for persistant
classes. This will let you pass copies of objects to the
presentation layer of the application without getting a stale
refference exception and will also let you store copies of these
objects in other objects.
To delete objects you must override the 'preDestroyPersistant()' method
in the persistant classes that may get deleted. Each field in a
class that is not a primitive must be destroyed before you can destroy
the containing object in ObjectStore.
You can't use objects of a persistant class outside of a database
transaction.
User Guide
Introduction
Login
Instructor Options
Student Options
Logout
To start the application browse to
http://[host or IP]:[Tomcat
port]/Quiz/ (example: http://localhost:8084/Quiz/) on the server where
the application is deployed. The first page is shown below.
To login click the 'Login' link on the left side of
the page.
The login page is shown below. To login as a student, use the
username and password that has been assigned to you. To login in
as the Administrator/Insturctor use the special username/password of
"admin/admin".
If loggin in as the Instructor you will see the
following home page. It lists some statictics about the contents
of the Quiz database and shows options for updating/viewing the
question bank, creating quizzes, adding students, and viewing reports.
The 'Question Bank' link will take you to the page below, where you can
add new questions to the question bank, or list the existing questions.
The following page is the form for adding a new True/False question to
the question bank. The Book, Chapter, and Section text boxes
describe the reference where the answer to the question can be
found. The answer is either true or false.
The following page is the form for adding a new Multiple Choice
question to
the question bank. The Book, Chapter, and Section text boxes
describe
the reference where the answer to the question can be found. You
supply four possible answers to the question and then check the box or
boxes next to the answers that are correct. There can be one or
more correct answers.
The following page is a view of the 'list questions' function.
Each question is listed along with the correct answers.
Once you have populated the question bank with some questions you can
begin to group your questions into quizzes. The following page
shows the list of available quizzes and the links for creating new
quizzes and assigning quizzes to specific students.
When you click on 'Create Quiz' the form shown below allows you to name
and describe the new quiz, and then select the questions from the
question bank that you want included in the quiz. In the example
below only the two True/False questions are selected.
Once you have created a question bank and some quizzes you are ready to
add students to the database. The following page is shown when
you click on the 'Students' link on the left side of the page.
From here you can add new students, assign students to take quizzes and
view the students in the database.
To create a new student click the 'Create Student' link. The form
displayed takes the students name and user ID. By default the
students password is set to the same string as the user ID.
Now that you have questions, quizzes, and students in the data base it
is time to assign quizzes to be taken by students. The following
page can be accessed from either the 'Quizzes' link or the 'Students'
navagation link on the left. To assign the quiz select the quiz
and student from the drop down lists and click 'submit'.
When students login the have a slightly
different view. The page below is the student home page.
From here students can take quizzes or view their grades.
Clicking the 'Quizzes' navagation link will list the quizzes that have
been assigned to the student by the Instructor.
To take a quiz, click on the quiz that you want to take on the page
above. The quiz questions will be displayed in a form as shown
below. Complete each question and then click submit.
Once the student submits the quiz it is immediately graded and the
results are shown to the student as shown below. In this example
the student answered one out of two questions correctly for a score of
50%.
The 'Grades' navagation link will show the current grades for all
quizzes that have been assigned to the student. Quizzes that have
not yet been taken will show a grade of '0.0'.
And when you are ready to leave the application
simply click the 'Logout' navagation link on the left side of the
page. The logout confirmation page is shown below.
Page Flows
Source Code
The NetBeans 4.0 project folder contains all source for this project. The JSP source can be found
in the 'web' directory in the project folder. The Java class
source can be found in the 'src' directory.