| COMP3311 23T3 |
Assignment 2 Grades and Rules |
Database Systems |
[Specification] [Database] [SQL Schema] [Grades+Rules] [Examples] [Testing] [Submitting] [Fixes+Updates]
This document contains a detailed description of how different kinds of rules are defined and what effects grades have in various contexts.
Grades have different effects in different contexts:
| Grades | Req | UOC | WAM |
| A,B,C,D (with + or -) | yes | yes | no |
| HD,DN,CR,PS | yes | yes | yes |
| XE,T | yes | yes | no |
| SY,EC,RC | yes | yes | no |
| AF,FL,UF,E,F | no | no | yes |
| AS,AW,NA,PW,RD | no | no | no |
| NF,NC,LE,PE,WD,WJ | no | no | no |
| null | no | no | no |
Note: AF has no associated mark; it is treated as if the mark were zero.
What to print on the transcript for each type of grade:
Many of these grades do not appear in the database, and I don't include EM (excluded due to academic misconduct) which isn't really a grade applied to individual courses. If you want to find what all these grades mean, take a look at the UNSW web site.
This gives examples of how different kinds of requirements are defined in the MyMyUNSW database.
| Code | Description | Acad Objects | Min/Max |
| stream | = satisfied all requirements for a stream | enumerated list of stream codes | # streams to complete |
| core | Core Courses; must complete all | list of course codes (no patterns, but may have alternatives (i.e. "{c1;c2}")) | set min/max to null |
| elective | Prescribed Electives | list of courses (enumerated or patterns) | must complete UOC between min and max; (max = null) means "at least min UOC"; (min = null) means "up to max UOC"; cannot both be null |
| free | Free Electives | special pattern "FREE####"; anything not core or elective or gened can be a free elective | as for "elective" |
| gened | General Education | special pattern "GEN#####"; any course not core or elective can be GenEd (priority to courses with course codes like GEN#####**) | typically min = max = 12 |
| uoc | Units of Credits needed | no academic objects | (max = null) means "at least min UOC"; (min = null) means "up to max UOC"; cannot both be null |
** In theory, you should reject GEs from within the faculty. Since this database is based on enrolment data, this shouldn't happen. And since doing this checks adds extra complexity, there's no need to check.
You can find out more about the kinds of rules in the database by asking a query on the Requirements table, to see how things are structured.
A critical part of describing requirements is the subject/stream info in the academic object group associated with each rule.
Note that each academic object group contains items of one particular type; either subjects or streams.
For this assignment, academic object groups are defined as comma-separated lists of items. Each item could be either a course or stream code, a choice of several courses, or a pattern, which identifies multiple courses. There are a wide variety of patterns. You should explore the Requirements table to see what's available. To give you a head start, here are some patterns and what they mean:
Definitions such as the above are stored in the acadobjs field in the Requirements table.
Here are the requirements for each program and stream. They were derived from manual reading of the Handbook and some requirements have been simplified compared to the Handbook. It's possible that some rule sets don't accurately reflect the Handbook. All of the examples and test cases are based on what's in the database and may not precisely reflect reality.