Cambridge Assessment International Education

Cambridge International Advanced Subsidiary and Advanced Level

* 1 3 8 9 7 7 8 0 4 2 *

COMPUTER SCIENCE 9608/13

Paper 1 Theory Fundamentals May/June 2019
1 hour 30 minutes
Candidates answer on the Question Paper.
No Additional Materials are required.
No calculators allowed.

READ THESE INSTRUCTIONS FIRST

Write your centre number, candidate number and name in the spaces at the top of this page.
Write in dark blue or black pen.
You may use an HB pencil for any diagrams, graphs or rough working.
Do not use staples, paper clips, glue or correction fluid.
DO NOT WRITE IN ANY BARCODES.

Answer all questions.

No marks will be awarded for using brand names of software packages or hardware.

At the end of the examination, fasten all your work securely together.
The number of marks is given in brackets [ ] at the end of each question or part question.

The maximum number of marks is 75.

This document consists of 14 printed pages and 2 blank pages.

DC (SC) 163550/3
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1 A computer has an operating system (OS) and utility software.

(a) The following table lists key management tasks performed by an operating system and
their descriptions.

Complete the table by writing the missing management task names and descriptions.

Management task Description

Memory management

Provides user accounts and passwords

Handles the signals sent when the attention of the processor is

required elsewhere

Provision of a software
platform

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(b) A hard disk formatter and a hard disk defragmenter are two examples of utility software.

(i) Describe the actions performed by a hard disk formatter and a hard disk defragmenter.

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(ii) Identify three other examples of utility software that can be installed on the computer.

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2 Frankie is a software developer. He is developing a program to manage customer records for a

client with an online retail business. He must ensure that data stored about each customer are
both secure and private.

(a) State the difference between security and privacy.

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(b) Computer systems can be protected by physical methods such as locks.

Describe two non-physical methods used to improve the security of computer systems.

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(c) A computer uses parity blocks to check the data that has been received is the same as the
data that has been transmitted.

The following is an example of a parity block.

Parity
Data
bit
1 1 1 1 0 0 0 1
0 0 0 0 1 1 1 0
1 1 0 1 1 0 0 1
Parity
1 1 0 1 1 0 0 1
byte

(i) Describe how a parity block check can identify a bit that has been corrupted during
transmission.

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(ii) Give a situation where a parity block check cannot identify corrupted bits.

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(d) One principle of the ACM/IEEE Software Engineering Code of Ethics is to always act in the
best interest of the client.

Explain how Frankie can ensure that he is acting in the best interest of his client.

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(e) When the program is complete, Frankie uses a compiler to prepare the program for the client.

Explain why Frankie uses a compiler instead of an interpreter.

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3 A company uses a relational database, EMPLOYEES, to store data about its employees and
departments.

(a) The company uses a Database Management System (DBMS).

(i) The DBMS has a data dictionary.

Describe what the data dictionary stores.

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(ii) The DBMS has a query processor.

Describe the purpose of a query processor.

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(b) Relationships are created between tables using primary and foreign keys.

Describe the role of a primary and a foreign key in database relationships.

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(c) In the company:

• An employee can be a manager.

• A department can have several managers and several employees.
• An employee can only belong to one department.

The EMPLOYEES database has three tables:

EMPLOYEE_DATA(EmployeeID, FirstName, LastName, DateOfBirth, Gender,

DepartmentNumber)
DEPARTMENT(DepartmentNumber, DepartmentName)
DEPARTMENT_MANAGER(DepartmentNumber, EmployeeID, role)

Complete the entity-relationship (E-R) diagram for the EMPLOYEES database.

EMPLOYEE_DATA

DEPARTMENT_MANAGER DEPARTMENT

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(d) Give three reasons why the EMPLOYEES database is fully normalised.

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(e) Part of the EMPLOYEE_DATA table is shown.

EmployeeID FirstName LastName DateOfBirth Gender DepartmentNumber

156FJEK Harvey Kim 12/05/1984 Male S1
558RRKL Catriona Moore 03/03/1978 Female F2
388LMDV Oscar Ciao 01/01/1987 Male F2

(i) Write a Data Definition Language (DDL) statement to create the EMPLOYEES database.

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(ii) Write a DDL statement to define the table EMPLOYEE_DATA, and declare EmployeeID
as the primary key.

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(iii) Write a Data Manipulation Language (DML) statement to return the first name and last
name of all female employees in the department named Finance.

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4 A program is written in assembly language.

(a) The op codes LDM and LDD are used to load a register. The op code LDM uses immediate
addressing, and the op code LDD uses direct addressing.

Describe what happens when the following instructions are run.

LDM #300

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LDD 300

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(b) Assembly language instructions can be grouped by their purpose.

The following table shows four assembly language instructions.

Tick (✓) one box in each row to indicate the group each instruction belongs to.

Jump Arithmetic Data

Instruction Description
instruction operation movement
LDR #3 Load the number 3 to the
Index Register
ADD #2 Add 2 to the Accumulator

JPN 22 Move to the instruction at

address 22
DEC ACC Subtract 1 from the
Accumulator
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(c) The processor handles interrupts within the fetch-execute cycle.

(i) Give one example of a hardware interrupt and one example of a software interrupt.

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(ii) Explain how the processor handles an interrupt.

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5 Xander creates a presentation that includes images, video and sound.

(a) The images are bitmap images. A bitmap image can be made up of any number of colours.
Each colour is represented by a unique binary number.

Draw one line from each box on the left, to the correct box on the right to identify the minimum
number of bits needed to store each maximum number of colours.

Maximum number of colours Minimum number of bits

1
68

2
256

127

2
8

249
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(b) One of the videos has a frame rate of 40 fps (frames per second).

(i) State what is meant by 40 fps.

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(ii) One video uses interlaced encoding, and a second video uses progressive encoding.

Describe two differences between interlaced and progressive encoding.

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(c) The sound track has a sampling rate of 88.2 kHz and a sampling resolution of 32 bits.

State what is meant by a sampling rate of 88.2 kHz and a sampling resolution of 32 bits.

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© UCLES 2019 9608/13/M/J/19