CS 315 Final Exam Terms and Concepts

Basic Internet

• Internet vs. WWW
• IP addresses vs. fully qualified domain names
• URLs
• MIME types
• http protocol
• big idea of how all this stuff works

HTML5

• Know what HTML is and what XHTML is and the distinctions.
• Be able to detect HTML5 syntax errors.
• Know the standard structure of a document.
• Know how standard HTML5 will be displayed.
• Understand what validation is and why it is important.
• Be able to recognize and repair simple validation problems.
• All the simple HTML5 discussed in this section, including images, hypertext links, lists, tables, positioning (absolute vs. relative vs. static and how to use them) and forms.

Cascading Style Sheets

• Know about the different places that style information can be presented, inline, document level and external.
• Understand the simple cases of how the cascading of style information works.
• Know the syntax for inline and document/external style descriptions.
• Know how to do simple style specifications for things like fonts, colors, list properties, text alignment, and how to use the span and div tags.

PHP

• Be familiar with PHP and be able to write simple PHP programs.
• Understand the somewhat odd way that arrays work in PHP.
• Recall how to do file I/O in PHP.
• Be familiar with regular expressions and pattern matching in PHP and be prepared to use them in simple examples.
• Understand what cookies and sessions are and how they work in PHP. You don't have to remember all the details of the syntax.

Basic Javascript

• Be able to write basic Javascript code.
• Understand Javascript's object model and how it is different from standard object-oriented programming models.
• Know how to use alert, confirm and prompt for simple pop-up interactions with the user.
• Know how to create and modify objects.
• Be able to do simple things with arrays.
• Know how to define and invoke functions, including simple parameter passing.
• Know how to specify patterns as regular expressions, including knowing the constructs discussed in the text. (There will definitely be questions about this stuff, similar to your fourth homework.)

Javascript and the DOM

• Understand the basics of the Document Object Model (DOM).
• Understand how getElementById is used to find elements using id attributes.
• Know how to write event handlers and unobtrusive ways of associating an event handler with an event.
• The form validation example from class combines a lot of these ideas at a level I expect you to be able to reproduce.

Javascript Positioning and AJAX

• Element positioning: absolute vs. relative vs. static
• Moving elements by changing the top and left properties
• Controlling visibility
• Changing style attributes of DOM objects
• Be familiar with the basic ideas of AJAX and how they can be used to update pages without reloading. You do not need to worry about the details of AJAX Javascript syntax, but you should be familiar with the main concepts.

Servers and Security

• Know what a web server is and, in a general way, what web server software is
• Understand web security issues as discussed in class
  • Know what buffer overflow is and why it is a problem
  • Understand the basics of public key cryptography
  • Know what certificates are and how they can be used to set up a secure connection between a browser and a web server using SSL
  • Understand some simple ways to clean up input from forms and why it is important to do so

Relational Databases

• Understand what a relational database is.
• Understand why relational databases are so useful in concert with web pages.
• Understand in a general way how to use PHP to insert and select elements in MySQL databases.
• Know how to encode simple insert and select commands in SQL. Nothing too complicated. No joins required.

XML and Beyond

• Know what XML is and what it looks like
• Know how to tell if XML is well-formed.
• Understand simple uses of Document Type Definitions (DTDs) to specify an XML application (i.e., a tag set).
• Know what it means for an XML document to be validated.
• Be passingly familiar with XML Schema as an alternate way to specify an XML tag set.
• Understand how to use CSS to get browsers to format XML in a reasonable way.
• Be somewhat familiar with XSLT as an alternate languages for formatting and transforming XML.