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Modern Application Development I: exam pattern and behaviour

Computed from every MAD1 paper on the practice site (132 papers, 2933 questions), with the topic weights, question types and how much repeats.

What a paper looks like

Exam	Papers	Years	Typical marks	Typical no. of questions	Share of questions	Share of marks	Papers with a comprehension block
Quiz 1 weeks 1-4	43	2022-2026	50	16	MCQ 81% / MSQ 18% / SA 1%	MCQ 82% / MSQ 17% / SA 1%	74%
Quiz 2 weeks 5-8	39	2022-2026	50	16	MCQ 69% / MSQ 29% / SA 2%	MCQ 67% / MSQ 32% / SA 2%	51%
End Term all 12 weeks	50	2022-2026	100	32	MCQ 76% / MSQ 22% / SA 1%	MCQ 75% / MSQ 24% / SA 2%	88%

Some uploads on the source site merge two parallel sets, which is why a few papers show double marks. MCQ = one right option, MSQ = one or more right options (strict marking), SA = type the number.

Which weeks the papers lean on

Week topic	Quiz 1	Quiz 2	End Term
1. How the web works: clients, servers, URLs and HTTP	100%	100%	100%
2. HTML and CSS: building and styling pages	100%	87%	100%
3. Views: Jinja2 templates, Bootstrap and forms	100%	100%	100%
4. Models: databases, SQL, ER diagrams and SQLAlchemy	84%	100%	100%
5. Controllers: Flask routes and business logic	88%	100%	100%
6. APIs and REST: OpenAPI and Flask-RESTful	58%	100%	100%
7. Backend systems: indexing, search, caching and logging	100%	100%	100%
8. The frontend: JavaScript, the DOM and fetch	26%	60%	71%
9. Security: authentication, sessions, tokens and attacks	16%	73%	87%
10. Testing web applications with pytest	7%	13%	100%
11. HTML5, accessibility, encoding and beyond HTML	65%	60%	60%
12. Deployment: Git, WSGI, servers and the cloud	12%	0%	76%

Share of papers whose concept summary mentions the week's topic (keyword match, so treat it as a guide, not a count of questions).

How much repeats

Exam	Papers	Exam dates	Question slots	Different questions	Copies of each (average)	Different questions seen on 2+ exam dates
Quiz 1	43	11	697	181	3.9	3 (2%)
Quiz 2	39	10	630	160	3.9	1 (1%)
End Term	50	12	1606	467	3.4	33 (7%)

Read this carefully. Within one exam date the parallel sets are drawn from the same pool, so each different question appears on several papers (the 'copies' column). Across different dates, questions with identical wording or identical figure files are rare. Matching here is exact, so a re-typed or re-cropped version counts as different; the real overlap in question type is much higher than this table can see. The takeaway: old papers teach you the types and stories that come back with new numbers, they are not a list of answers to memorise.

Questions that came back on a later exam date (exact match)

Exam dates it appeared on	Question (text-based ones)
4	Consider the following flask app. Given that `test_request_context()` allows text to be printed on the terminal, which of the following statements is/are correct? ```pyth	open
4	Consider the following graph that represents the variation in bandwidth of a network for an entire day (24 hours). Three users were connected to the network at three diff	open
3	Consider the following models Library and Book corresponding to tables library and book in SQLite database. ```python class Library(db.Model): id = db.Column(db.Integer()	open
3	Consider the following flask resource created using flask_restful. ```python from flask import Flask, request from flask_restful import Api, Resource, reqparse app = Flas	open
3	Consider a function func, and a set of test cases given below. Filename: test_file.py ```python import pytest def func(x,y): out = x2+y2 return out class Test_class0(	open
3	Consider the following function to be tested and test functions given in the Python code snippet below. test_file.py ```python import pytest def square(x): sum = 0 for co	open
3	Consider the following python code snippet "app.py", the HTML files, "base.html" and "home.html" residing in "templates" folder. app.py ```python from flask import Flask,	open
2	THIS IS QUESTION PAPER FOR THE SUBJECT "DIPLOMA LEVEL: MODERN APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT 1" ARE YOU SURE YOU HAVE TO WRITE EXAM FOR THIS SUBJECT? CROSS CHECK YOUR HALL TICKE	open
2	Consider the following flask application. app.py ```python from flask import Flask, request app = Flask(__name__) @app.route('/calculate') def calculate(): a = request.ar	open
2	The directory listing of a folder and the content of each of its files are given below. Directory Listing: ``` my_dir-\| \|-- base.html \|-- home.html \|-- index.html ```	open

What an MAD1 paper is like

MAD1 tests whether you can read a small web application and say what it does. Typical stems from the papers (paraphrased):

"Which of the following is a block-level element and which is an inline element?"
"What can be inferred from the Entity-Relationship Diagram below?" (one-to-one, one-to-many, many-to-many)
"Consider the following Python file and the template. If the application is running at http://127.0.0.1:5000, which of the following statements is true?"
"Consider the SQLAlchemy model Order mapped to the table orders. What does this query return?"
"Consider the following table in a SQLite database. What will this SQL statement return?"
"A network with a bandwidth of 10 Mbps allows 1000 requests per second. If each request grows by ... how many requests per second can it handle?"
"What will be returned on terminal 2 for the command ..." (curl or Flask output)
"Which of the below HTTP status codes represents a client error?"
"Which of the following is not a perceivable accessibility principle?"

Where the marks are

From matching the real questions (with the code in the screenshots transcribed) to the weeks:

Quiz 1 leans on how the web works, HTML, CSS and Jinja2 (weeks 1 to 3), then SQL, ER diagrams and SQLAlchemy (week 4) and Flask routes (week 5). About 55 percent of the questions involve code.
Quiz 2 keeps the early topics and adds Flask and templates together, SQLAlchemy queries, REST APIs and caching (weeks 5 to 7); code questions rise to about 64 percent.
End Term covers everything; the heaviest areas are still web basics, HTML/CSS, Jinja2, databases and Flask, plus testing (pytest, week 10) and Git questions, with small but real shares for security, encoding/accessibility and deployment.

Watch out - real exam trap

Jinja2 output questions: whitespace, loop.index starting at 1, {% if %} on empty lists, filters such as |upper, and autoescaping.
Flask route questions: which methods a route accepts, what url_for generates, redirect vs render_template, 404 vs 405.
SQL questions: NULL comparisons, GROUP BY with HAVING, JOIN row counts, LIMIT/OFFSET.
Bandwidth and latency arithmetic: carefully convert bits to bytes and Mbps to MB/s.
HTTP: idempotent vs safe methods, status code families, cookies vs sessions.

How to prepare

What the papers show

Order of attack: weeks 1 to 5 first (they are worth the most marks in every exam), then weeks 6, 7 and 10, then the rest. For each week do the lesson, its quiz, and the real questions page, saying the output before you open the answer. Run the transcribed code on your own computer when you are unsure: Flask 3, Jinja2 and SQLite are enough for almost every question.