Design And Implementation Of Programming Contest System

In recent years, as Internet technology advanced, online examination and contest system has become one of the most active areas in network research and application. In developed countries, the system has been widely adopted and has become the integral part of the modern education. It is ideal for personalized learning experiences. Domestically, online examination and contest system is still in its infancy. Traditional way of examination is no longer apt to the development of modern education, and as a result, it becomes an important and urgent task to develop an examination and contest system which fits our unique educational requirement. At present, Internet technology grows rapidly worldwide, and people pay more and more attention to online applications. Web-based examination and contest system was born under this circumstance. Although traditional way of examination is still widely used, web-based applications are gaining recognition and popularity, the birth of online examination system that serves as an integral part of the educational system is at dawn. For a long time, this system has not been widely adopted due to the limitation of technology and specific requirements of examination by itself. We have done an extensive and in-depth research on above-mentioned aspects, including the composition of online examination and contest system, the operational mechanism, applied technology and implementation. Here we describe in details on the system development methodology, overall planning, design goal and implementation, strives to improve and perfect the online examination and contest system.Programming Contest system is based on B/S architecture. It is developed using SQL Server and advanced J2EE technology. The goal is to organize objective, fair and scientifically sound standard contest system. The system is web-based online question/answer and ranking management system. It provides extremely convenient way to generate a large number of questions and answers. These online contents can be open, so anybody can access it, or system's functionality can be strictly restricted for the contenders. The system is oriented for both learning and contest. This article elaborates the system in the following aspects:1. Background, specific aim, system design and development tools used. As computer technology advancing, people need more than ever a system which meets the need for programming contest. It should enable contestant to compete together and grade them too. This system is designed to meet these needs.2. The article elaborated the functional and structural requirement for current contest system. The article completed the database requirement analysis, conceptual structure design, using ERD diagrams to illustrate the relationships between entities. In the process of designing the system, we divided the system to several modules, trying to assign only one function per module, inter-module communication was done through parameter passing. The main functionality of the system was focused on contestant's programming design section, and the scale needs to be expanded. The system provided contestants convenient, fast and efficient operational function, allowing contestants to demonstrate their true skills, moreover, it is also responsive and fast, such as in the applications of user login, source code submission and ranking system searching etc.3. The article completed the platform's system design, and illustrated in detail on system functional design, the system workflow, system functional module and system data flow.4. In the key technology research section, the article demonstrated how to guarantee the system security, flexibility and scalability. The system utilized login encryption technology to improve system security. Furthermore, based on the extensive analysis of the access strategy for permanent storage data, we designed and implemented lightweight DAO (Data Access Object) patter and J2EE framework.5. This article also discussed web site deployment and its operation.6. Lastly, the article discussed testing methodology and testing result analysis. The final stage of the system design is the system testing and evaluation stage. The task of testing is to discover and eliminate bugs produced during requirement analysis, design and coding stages so as to produce a functional product. The task of evaluation is to ensure the system meet customer's function specification, making sure the system has good performance and ease of maintenance and upgrade. In the test process, we used unit test, integrated test and validation test, respectively. The system implemented most expected functions, but there are still flaws. During testing process, we have used as many appropriate test cases as possible, testing thoroughly on important logic paths and data structure. However, no mater we used white box testing or black box testing, it is impossible to do full code coverage testing, because one small subset in the logical path can produce a large amount of test data, which made it impossible under test environment.In order to help readers understand the system design process, this thesis has incorporated numbered diagrams with detailed illustration and explanation.This article firstly introduced the background and significance of the research, summarized domestic research findings on examination and contest system, demonstrated system design and contest workflow etc..; secondly, the article analyzed and designed individual subsystem; finally, the article showed implementation of the examination and contest system. Due to the time and resource limitation, the author's research on the subject is still incomplete, a few areas of system design and development remain to be addressed:1. To further strengthen the systemic capability on automatic evaluation, e.g. using Artificial Intelligence to improve the accuracy of the grading system.2. Using Artificial Intelligence, Data Mining and neural network knowledge to improve the smart statistical analysis module.3. Further research on knowledge point structure system. The examination and contest system uses layer to model the knowledge point system structure. But in real world, the knowledge point system is more complex. How we can use net to model the knowledge point and how we use net knowledge point system in evaluation system are directions for further research.