Tools for grading students' exercises for Microsoft Access applications

This paper describes the teacher's tools for automated grading of students' exercises in Microsoft Access skill and knowledge. The method requires teachers to build etalon sample of Microsoft Access database which satisfies all the requirements expected to be done by the students. This etalon is processed by Distiller Utility to extract information about database objects and its properties into decision-support database. The Property Browser allows the teachers to assign score points for correct value settings of arbitrary property for each database table, form, report or their fields, sections or controls. Finally, the Grader Utility is to perform inspection of collected student's databases and report their results. Flexible parameterized exercise description is also generated with RTF memos included. Some degree of robustness is accomplished in grading accuracy for text and numeric values. The development is in the direction to port decision-support database from Microsoft Access to Microsoft SQL server, Property Browser as ASP.NET application and includes Queries and Entity Relationship support.