First Aid Quiz web site, now on updated perl quiz engine

14 June 2006

I have now updated The First Aid Quiz Web Site to use the new version of fhe quiz engine, which is not at version 0.3.1. This will mean that it is now inline with the LPI Certification Exams on PenguinTutor.com.

Most of the updates are hidden to the end users. In an earlier post I already mentioned the main update which was to replace the Cache::FileCache Perl module with a MySQL DB session table. There are however several other new features.

The complete list of new features is below:

Removed the requirement for Cache::FileCache Perl module (to allow it to work on hosted web servers).
Added a question administration interface, which will make it easier to update the questions when the next version of the First Aid Manual is produced to reflect the new changes.
Improved support for accented characters in the names of visitors (removes errors).
Longer session expiry time.
Offline quiz can now be enabled or disabled (it remains enabled for the First Aid Quiz).
New MySQL structure now allows for multiple quizzes in the same database.
Offline quiz can now have the ability to go back from the answers to see the questions, without starting a new session (not yet enabled).
Format of the html templates changed to make it easier to create the templates using a html editor.
Better support for different quizes (hard coded values have been removed).
Easier to add new sub-quizzes without having to make changes to the database setup.
Question I.D. numbers are now automatically generated, rather than having to create a unique name for each one.
Some minor bug fixes.

Whilst not a new feature an important point is that this is now on the same version as at www.penguintutor.com, so that as improvements are made they can be applied immediately. There is no longer need to back port functionality, or maintain multiple versions.

My one concern is that this increases the number of database queries and may have a small impact on the performance of the server, although it does remove the need for some small files, which needed to be maintained. I will monitor this and see if there is any noticeable degradation in performance, although I can't see any at the moment.

As I say most of these changes will be completely transparent to the user, but it improves the platform for future updates. There are still a lot more things that need to be done before this can be released as open source software, but that is still my plan for the future.

If you have any comments / bugs on the quiz then please leave a message on the PenguinTutor Forums.