A programming club has created a booking program for the school theatre. Ed writes the program in a high-level language, then uses software to prepare it be...
Question 1 Report
A programming club has created a booking program for the school theatre. Ed writes the program in a high-level language, then uses software to prepare it before it can run on the theatre computer. Fig. 1 shows a simplified route from Ed's source code to the completed program. The club is deciding whether to distribute only the finished program or the source code as well.
(a) State what is meant by source code. [2]
(b) Describe the purpose of the compiler shown in Fig. 1. [3]
(c) Which file in Fig. 1 would normally be supplied to theatre staff so that they can run the program? [1]
(d) Explain two reasons why Ed should test the program before it is used for real ticket bookings. [4]
(e) Give two examples of information that could be entered as test data for a theatre booking. [2]
Answer Details
(a) Source code is the instructions written by a programmer in a high-level programming language before translation. [2]
(b) The compiler translates source code into machine/object code, checks for syntax errors during translation, and produces code used to create an executable program. [3]
(c) Theatre staff would normally receive the executable file, because this is the completed program they can run. [1]
(d) Testing identifies errors before real bookings are affected. It checks calculations such as total cost, checks that validation rejects invalid seat numbers/data, and confirms reliable operation with expected inputs. Any two explained points. [4]
(e) Valid test-data examples include number of tickets, performance date, seat number, customer name and payment reference. Any two. [2]
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