April
1999 QUESTION 1 (Compulsory) Total Marks: 20 Marks |
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questions
GRADE A
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| (a) | Define the term external fragmentation. | [2] |
| External fragmentation
occurs when there are enough free space to satisfy a process request, but all the spaces
are not in continuos form.
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| (b) | Define the term shell in the context of operating systems. | [2] |
| Shell is the high
level comments that allow users to interact with the system.
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| (c) | Define the term block device. | [2] |
| Block device is one
kind of input/output device that store information in a fixed-length block and it's also
allow each block to be read or write independently.
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| (d) | Define the term object code optimization. | [2] |
| Object code
optimization is a process that make the produced object code to be more compact,
efficiency and minimizing the run time.
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| (e) | Define the term archive file. | [2] |
| Archive file is also
known as history file that store information that are not frequently needed. It is stored
in offline or remote location.
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| (f) | Define the term high hit rate. | [2] |
| High hit rate is there
are a large number of records in the file that need updating, retrieving or referencing.
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| (g) | Define the term folding in the context of indirect addressing. | [2] |
| Folding is one of the
indirect addressing method that spilt the record's key into two more parts. Then they are
added together to form a new number, i.e the record's address.
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| (h) | Define the term synonym. | [2] |
| Synonym is when two or
more records are converted into the same address using a hashing algorithm.
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| (i) | Define the term overflow data area. | [2] |
| Overflow data area is
the data storage area for the index-sequential file when the home data area is full. It is
at the last part of the index-sequential file structure.
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| (j) | Define the term absolute path. | [2] |
| Absolute path is the
path from the root directory to the current directory. It is an unique path.
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