COSC 122 Programming II Final Examination Study Guide

The material presented in this guide covers the concepts emphasized on the final examination. It is meant to guide students studying and reviewing for the exam; it is not guarranteed to be comprehensive. Actual test questions will differ from the examples given here. Students should use this guide in addition to other study activities (like reading the book(s), reviewing completed assignments and old quizzes, etc.)

The final examination will be based primarily on Chapters 1–11.1 of the Halterman book. For additional study material, you may consult Liang Chapters 1–16, 21, 28.

• Know the following concepts. Understand where they apply and when they should or could be used. Know how to apply them in a programming context.
  • Identifiers, naming and using

  • Java's primitive types and their wrapper classes.

  • Arithmetic with variables and literals, integer arithmetic vs. floating point arithmetic, mixed arithmetic, the limitations of floating point representations, constants

  • Boolean expressions involving relational operators and logical connectives: ==, !=, <=, >=, <, >, &&, ||, !

  • Conditional statements: if/else, switch, and the conditional operator

  • Loops: while, do/while, and for

  • Classes: defining and using, packaging, fields, methods, instance vs. class variables, instance vs. class (static) methods, native methods, recursion, etc.

  • Methods: defining, invoking, parameter passing, local variables, call by value, method invocation vs. definition, formal vs. actual parameters, overloading vs. overriding, method signatures.

  • Constructors, overloading constructors, super this when used in constructor definitions.

  • Objects, classes vs. objects, instancing, using new, reference variables vs. primitive types, reference assignment, object aliasing, garbage and garbage collection

  • Java memory model: stack, heap, and static memory

  • Java keywords that influence the design of classes: public, private, protected, static, abstract, final, etc. The two uses of the keyword final.

  • Inheritance and issues involved with inheritance: is a relatonship, overriding methods, polymorphism, super classes and subclasses, the extends keyword, abstract vs. concrete classes

  • Java interfaces: defining, using, can do relationship

  • Composition and issues involved with composition: composition (has a) vs. inheritance (is a), delegation, aggregation

  • The Unified Modeling Language, as used in class design: class structure, inheritance, composition.

  • Swing Graphics in Java: graphics context, components, layout managers, event listeners, applets.

  • Exceptions: defining, catching, throwing, declaring, checked vs. unchecked exceptions, the Exception class hierarchy

  • Generics: defining and using.

• Be able to do the following tasks.
  • Answer multiple choice, matching, true/false, fill in the blank, and similar type questions. These may refer to basic concepts, simple coding examples, etc.

  • "Playing computer;" that is, examining a code fragment and determining what that section will do. This may be in the form of answering questions such as:
    • What will printed?
    • How many times will x occur?
    • What will the value of x be?

• Writing classes.
  • Be able to provide a the Java source code for a class given the specifications for its missing details. For example:

    A Summation object is used to compute the sum of all the integers between two values, inclusive. For example,

    		Summation s = new Summation(10, 15);
    		System.out.println(s.sum());
    		

    displays 75, since 10 + 11 + 12 + 13 + 14 + 15 = 75. Provide the complete Java class implementation for the Summation class.

    As another example, develop a class named Counter. Counter objects, obviously, can be used to count things. These objects work in a fashion similar to turnstiles that count people entering or leaving a building. A Counter object should be able to do no more or no less than the following:

    • automatically be set to zero when created
    • be able to be incremented by one
    • be able to be reset to zero after being created (for example, to count people entering for a different event)
    • be able to display its current count
    Completely define the Counter class.

  • Be able to derive a new class from an existing class using inheritance or implement a given interface.

  • Be able to implement a class or collection of classes from the UML diagram. Understand how fields, methods, abstractness, access permissions, etc. are represented in the UML.

During your study, take some time to reflect on what you have done in the assignments. If you have mastered the assignments, then you should not be overly challenged by the programming parts of the test. On the other hand, if you don't understand all of the assignments completely, (for example, your teammate did all or most of the work), then some of the programming problems may be challenging.