Files of results (results-files)
Overview
Programming Taskbook stores information about each test running of student's
program in a special file of results (the results-file) named results.dat. The data contained in
the file of results can be displayed with the special PT4Results tool.
This tool can also analyze the results-file data and display the summary information (for
example, the classes time, the amount of solved tasks for each task group, and so on). Of
course, all results-file data are encrypted and cannot be edited.
The results.dat file must exist in a student working directory. The initial part of this
file contains personal data of a student, a name of programming environment being used,
and a path to the system directory of Programming Taskbook (all these data are not
encrypted). This file also contains a registration number for Programming
Taskbook.
If the results-file is not found in the student's working directory (or contains a wrong
registration number) then Programming Taskbook displays the corresponding message and
runs in demo mode that does not provide checking program correctness.
The results.dat file can be created by PT4Setup or PT4TeachMini tool of
Programming Taskbook. Note that the PT4TeachMini tool allows to create results-files
quickly for all students of a group and gives opportunity to make backup copies of results-
files.
Browsing of results file data
Information that is contained in the results-file can be displayed and analyzed by
PT4Results tool. This tool is implemented as PT4Res.exe executable file. It is also
included in the PT4TeachMini tool (the teacher control center) and allows to browse results-
files of all students of a group (see the "Results file | Browsing results " menu command).
An information about each test running is stored in the result-file as follows:
Name EnvirID DateTime Message
where Name is a task name, EnvirID is an identifier of the programming environment being
used, DateTime is a date and time of the test running, Message is a brief description of
results of the test running. If results of several tests started successively are similar then
information about these tests will be stored in one text line. Such a text line is ended with
the number that indicates the amount of the tests with the similar result (see the text line that
is ended with "—3" on the picture).
The identifiers of all programming environments that can be used with Programming
Taskbook are listed below:
- b — Microsoft Visual Basic,
- B — Microsoft Visual Basic .NET,
- с — Microsoft Visual C++ и Borland C++Builder,
- d — Borland Delphi,
- S — Microsoft Visual C# .NET.
The PT4Results tool can also analyze the results-file data and display the summary
information. This information contains date and time of classes, the amount of solved tasks,
and so on (see the picture). The additional features of PT4Results tool connected with
browse of backup source codes are described in section 2.5.
Backing up and restoring results files
Because the results-files contain important information, it is desirable to make
backup copies of these files regularly. Therefore the PT4TeachMini tool can check the
current state of results-files and provides commands that are intended to backup results-files
(see the "Results file | Archive" menu command) and to restore them from the archive zip-
file (see the "Results file | Restore" menu command). Note that the commands compare the
size of the current results-file and the size of its backup copy and allow to backup or restore
only the newer results-file, that is, the file of larger size.
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