e-commerce question - what the examiner said

Question 5(a)

This question required candidates to apply their knowledge of backup and recovery to a

continuous e-commerce operation. Few candidates related their answers to the context of the question.

Most candidates were able to collect some marks on this question by discussing backup

strategies including: the type of backup, the frequency of backup, the timing of backup (e.g. at midnight), the choice of medium, the location of the backup and the personnel responsible for backups. Credit was awarded for discussing techniques such as disk mirroring and RAID.

Rarely did answers include the recovery of data and the need to complete recovery quickly to ensure continuity of service.

Information and Communication Technology - AQA GCE Report on the Examination 2009 June series

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Question 5(b)

Three types of processing were acceptable (Transaction (or pseudo real-time), Interactive and Batch) and the best answers discussed how these types of processing could be useful in ecommerce.

Batch Processing was acceptable, because an e-commerce organisation would

still have a payroll run or the need to print out address labels for mail-shots.

Weaker candidates did not answer in the context of e-commerce and merely explained what

was meant by each of the processing types and couldn’t gain good marks for their answers.

Question 5(c)

E-commerce covers a wide spectrum of business on-line, such as on-line booking and banking.

The meaning of society was taken in its widest sense when awarding credit.

Implications of e-commerce such as: reduced travel costs, reduced pollution, loss of social

interaction, a sedentary life-style, increased opportunity for crimes such as credit card fraud or identity theft, all gained credit.