TESDA Programming NCIV

At last I have successfully passed the TESDA Programming NCIV exam last December 5 and 6. The exam sure is tough and I think college students would have a hard time passing the exam especially those taking up 2-year programming course and the nominal PGS scholars. The exam has 2 parts. The object-oriented programming where in you have to develop a library system using any OOP language of your choice with MS Access integration and the second part, a payroll system using any procedural language using file manipulation functions. I used Visual Basic 2008 for the OOP and C for the procedural. For the first part, a candidate for NCIV must have knowledge in SQL in these areas: * LIKE * AND / OR * JOINS * Query grouping The candidate must also know how to cast database datetime column values to language DateTime object for date and time comparison. This is essential in the part where in you have to check for the validity of the user account. There are four tables in the database where in you have to query those tables all in one single query using joins. * tblUser - contains the userid and personal information of the user * tblUserAccount - contains the username and password * tblRoles - contains the role for each user account (e.g. Administrator or Member) * tblMembership - contains the validity of each user account For the second part, you must be familiar with the following C functions (if you prefer to use C for the procedural exam): * fopen * fgets * strtok * atoi * fflush * fprintf You must also be familiar with looping and conditional statements. The best way to pass this exam is to have a thorough review of the areas I mentioned above. College instructors must also be proficient in these areas in order for them to properly prepare the students for the NCIV exam.