CST 2012: Exam Pattern and Syllabus

Competence in Software Technology (CST) is an exam conducted by Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), Mumbai for students interested in pursuing career in software technology.

Exam Pattern for CST 2012

CST 2012 is a 5 hours multiple choice question exam with four sections. Each question carries 3 marks. There is negative marking in CST 2012 and 1 mark is deducted for each wrong answer. If you select more than 1 option as answer, it will be considered as wrong answer. Use of pagers, cell phones, calculators, slide rules, log tables or any other arithmetic aids is not permitted in C-DAC exam.

Syllabus for CST 2012

The CST exam is conducted at four different levels and the syllabus for each level varies.

Syllabus for Level E of CST 2012

1. General Aptitude (GA)

The main objective of this paper is to assess the general aptitude of the candidate to pursue a technical profession.  

2. Topics

This paper aims to test your logical reasoning, quantitative reasoning, visuo-spatial reasoning, high school mathematics, vocabulary, English comprehension and verbal ability. This test checks your understanding of concepts and their applications rather than for rote memory and routine arithmetic skills. A good grasp of the following topics of high school mathematics is required to crack CST 2012:

• Arithmetic: ratios and proportions, problems on time-work, distance-speed, percentage, etc.
• Basic Set Theory and Functions: Set, relations and mappings.
• Algebra: fundamental operations in algebra, expansion, factorization, simultaneous linear/quadratic equations, indices, logarithms, permutations and combinations.
• Geometry: angles at a point and parallel lines, triangles, polygons, circles, geometric transformations (particularly similarity, rotation and reflection), areas.
• Trigonometry: trigonometric ratios, problems on heights and distances.
• Coordinate Geometry: rectangular Cartesian coordinates, equations of a line, mid-point, intersections etc., equations of a circle, distance formulae, simple geometric transformations such as translation, rotation, scaling.
• Mensuration: areas, triangles and quadrilaterals, area and circumference of circles, volumes and surface areas of simple solids such as cubes, spheres, cylinders and cones.

3. Computer Concepts (CC)

• Computer basics: Organization of a computer, characteristics of a computer, Central Processing Unit (CPU), types of instructions in CPU, input/output devices, computer memory, primary memory and secondary memory, memory organization, backup devices.
• Data representation: Representation of characters, integers and fractions, binary and hexadecimal representations.
• Binary arithmetic: Addition, subtraction, division, multiplication, signed arithmetic and two’s complement arithmetic, floating point representation of numbers, normalized floating point representations.
• Foundations: Boolean algebra, truth tables and Venn diagrams.
• Computer architecture: Block structure of computers, communication between processor and memory, communication between processor and I/O devices, interrupts, multiprogramming, and virtual memory.
• Computer languages: Assembly language and characteristics of high-level languages.
• Operating System basics: Multiprogramming and timesharing operating systems.
• Programming using a subset of C: The candidate will not be required to write programmes and there will not be any questions on syntax. But candidates should be able to read and understand programmes involving the following: the assignment statement, blocks, the input-output statements (scanf and printf), relational and arithmetic operators, conditional statements and iterations.

Syllabus for Level I of CST 2012

1. General Aptitude (GA) and Computer Concepts (CC) – Same syllabus as Level E

2. Computer Programming in C (CP)

You should cover following topics to crack CST 2012: Data types, expression evaluation, precedence rules, type conversions, sequential structure, selective structure, repetitive structure, functions (including recursion), arrays, pointers, structures and unions, operations on bits, file processing, pre-processor. The syntax assumed will be that of ANSI C. Approximately 20% of the questions will test the candidate's knowledge of the syntactical structure of 'C'. The remaining questions will test the candidate’s working knowledge and understanding of the 'C'.  

Syllabus for Level D of CST 2012

1. General Aptitude (GA) and Computer Concepts (CC) – Same syllabus as Level E

2. Computer Organization and Operating Systems (CO)

• Basic concepts in Computer organization - Boolean algebra, number systems – binary, octal and hexadecimal, fixed point and floating point number representations.
• Computer structure – Von Neumann architecture, system bus, CPU instruction cycle, programmed I/O, interrupts and DMA, CPU registers, instruction formats and addressing modes.
• Memory organisation – types and hierarchy, model level organization, cache memory performance and design issues such as mapping, replacement and write policies.
• CPU Performance Enhancement – Basic idea of RISC and pipelined architectures.
• Fundamentals of operating systems – OS services and components, multitasking, multiprogramming, timesharing, buffering, spooling.
• Process and thread management – concept of process and threads, process states, process management, context switching, user and kernel mode switching, interaction between processes and OS, multithreading, user and kernel level threads.
• Concurrency control – concurrency and race conditions, mutual exclusion requirements, software and hardware solutions, semaphores, monitors, classical IPC problems and solutions, deadlocks - characterization, detection, recovery, avoidance and prevention.
• Memory management – memory partitioning, swapping, paging, segmentation, virtual memory, page replacement algorithms.
• I/O – interrupt handlers, device drivers, device independent software subsystem.
• File systems – file storage, access methods and free space management.
• Distributed systems – Basics of parallel, networked and distributed systems.
• Security – Need and strategies for security in standalone and networked systems, concept of access control list and capabilities, password and encryption schemes.
• Unix Operating System – basic design principles, concepts of kernel and shell, fundamentals of file system, process models and IPC mechanisms.
• Data Structures and Algorithms (DS) - This paper does not assume an in-depth knowledge of any particular programming language. If and when code segments are required to be given in questions, we will use a pseudo-language based on C/Java.
• Abstract data types: Notion of abstract data types and data structures, simple data structures including arrays, stacks, queues and linked lists (linear, circular and doubly-linked).
• Trees: Different types of trees including binary trees, complete binary trees, almost complete binary trees, binary search trees, balanced binary trees including AVL trees, heaps, multi-way search trees and B-trees; insertion and deletion of nodes and traversal in each of these types of trees.
• Graphs: Representations, directed and undirected graphs, notion of path, path finding algorithms, Dijkstra’s shortest-path algorithm, traversals and spanning trees, minimum spanning tree (algorithms of Kruskal and Prim), applications of graphs such as network flow problem and topological sort.
• Algorithms: Order notation; notions of P, NP and NP-complete problems, basics of algorithms design, different classes of algorithms; the following algorithms and their complexity measures: bubble sort, quick sort, selection sort, insertion sort, shell sort, heap sort and merge sort; searching algorithms including sequential search, ordered table search, binary search and binary tree search; hashing (hash collision, primary and secondary clustering, open addressing and chaining techniques, hash functions).

Syllabus for Level G of CST 2012

1. General Aptitude (GA) – Same syllabus as Level E of CST 2012

2. Computer Organization and Operating Systems (CO) - Same syllabus as Level D of CST 2012

3. Data Structures and Algorithms (DS) - Same syllabus as Level D of CST 2012

4. Computer Networks

• TCP/IP: reference model and concepts of networking protocols.
• Physical layer: Theoretical concepts in data communication (Fourier Analysis, bandwidth, baud rate, bit rate, error rate, transmission delays), Transmission Media, Communication Satellites, PSTN, Trunks and Multiplexing, Switching, Modems, xDSL, Mobile Telephone System, Internet Over Cable.
• Data Link Layer: Design issues, Error Detection and Correction, Elementary Data Link Protocols, Sliding Window Protocols,  Example Data Link Protocols
• Medium Access Control Sublayer: The channel allocation problem, multiple access protocols, Ethernet, Wireless LANs, Broadband Wireless, Data Link Layer switching
• Network layer: Design issues, routing algorithms, congestion control algorithms, Quality of Service, Internetworking, Network Layer in the Internet.
• Transport layer: Theoretical Aspects of Transport Protocols, UDP, TCP
• Common networking applications: E-mail, The World Wide Web, and DNS
• Network Security: Symmetric-Key Algorithms, Public-Key Algorithms, Digital Signatures, Digital Certificates, IPsec, Firewalls, Virtual Private Networks, Wireless Security, Authentication Protocols.

5. Database Management

• Database Systems - Basic Concepts: data, database, database systems, database management system; data models, data abstraction, data independence, three level architecture, data definition language, data manipulation language, overall system architecture of DBMS, data dictionary, schema processor, query processor, three classical data models (hierarchical, network and relational)
• Relational Data Model: relational structure - tables (relations), rows (tuples), domains, attributes, keys, candidate keys, primary key, entity integrity constraints, referential integrity constraints;
• Query languages - relational algebra, relational calculus, SQL
• Database Design: relational database design, normalization based on functional dependencies and multi-valued dependencies, Normal forms 1, 2, 3, BCNF, 4 and 5, conceptual design, entity-relationship model, translation of E-R schemes to relational schemes (logical design), physical design
• DBMS storage structures and access methods: hash, ISAM, B-Tree and B-Tree variants, dynamic hashing, primary index, secondary index.
• Query Processing: query expression trees, equivalence, query expression, tree optimization, cost estimation, implementation of relational algebra operations.
• Transaction Processing: recovery techniques, WAL based recovery, check pointing, concurrency control, serializability, lock-based concurrency control, strict two-phase locking, multiple granularity locking, time-stamp based concurrency control.
• Other Issues: security & integrity, authorization and views, security specification in SQL, types of integrity constraints, triggers in SQL, declarative constraints in SQL.

6. Java Technologies

• Language Fundamentals: Data representation, Operators and Expressions, Control Flow and Looping, Constructs, Classes and Objects, Interfaces, Inheritance, Polymorphism, Exception handling, Packages.
• Core API Packages (As specified in Java 2 Standard Edition 5.0): lang, util, io, math, awt, applet.
• Concepts: Swings (JFC), Thread Management, Serialization, Remote Method Invocation, Java Beans, Security Model, Collections, JDBC, Enterprise Java Beans 3.x

7. Object-Oriented Programming and C++

• OO Concepts: Objects, classes, messages, inheritance, dynamic binding, polymorphism, OO paradigm, reusability and extensibility, abstract data types, encapsulation, information hiding, genericity.
• Data Abstraction in C++: Classes, ADT implementation, interface and implementation, members, methods, static member and member functions, initialisation, constructors and destructors, operator and function overloading, parameter passing by value and by reference, function signatures and name mangling, dynamic memory allocation and new and delete operators, assignment operator overloading, shallow and deep copies, copy constructor, friend functions and classes, template functions and classes.
• Container classes, iterators, iostream class library, error handling and exceptions in C++.
• Inheritance and C++: Base and derived classes, public, private and protected derivations, control of access and visibility using public/private/protected keywords, type compatibility among super- and sub-types, value/pointer/reference assignment semantics, virtual functions, multiple inheritance and repeated inheritance, virtual derived classes.
• Object oriented design and programming using classes and inheritance.

8. Software Engineering

• Software Engineering Principles: how is software engineering an `engineering' discipline?, information system characteristics, software development process models, life cycle concepts, software phases and deliverables, software development strategies.
• Technical Development: structured systems analysis and design, risk analysis and management, requirements collection and specification, dataflow and logical data modelling, cost benefit analysis, feasibility study, architectural and detailed design, process, data, network, control and user interface designs, physical data design, dynamic modelling for real-time systems.
• Software Project Management: principles of software project management, organisational and team structure, project planning, project initiation and project termination; technical, quality, and management plans, project controls, cost estimation methods - function points and COCOMO, tools.
• Software Quality Management: quality control, quality assurance, quality standards, software metrics, verification and validation, testing, quality plans, tools.

9. Configuration Management

• Software Development Methods & CASE: formal, semi-formal and informal methods, data, function, and event-based modelling, some of the popular methodologies such as Yourdon's SAD, SSADM etc, CASE tools, CASE standards.
• Implementation: in 3GL environments, in 4GL environments, in client-server environments, coding styles, Documentation, Software Maintenance.

10. Web Technology

• HTTP: Overview - HTTP Basics, Client request, Server response; HTTP Headers;
• Session Management - Persistent connections, Cookies.
• General concepts on web server: Apache Configuration & Administration; Virtual hosting
• General concepts of Caching Proxy Server

11. Web Security

• SSL; Digital Signatures; Authentication.

12. Client side technologies

• HTML: Structure of HTML Document - Meta tags, Links, Text, Lists, Tables, Inclusions (Objects, Images, and Multimedia contents)
• Presentation of HTML Document - Style Sheets, Alignment, Fonts, Frames;
• Interactive HTML Document - Forms, Scripts.
• XML: Overview; Schemas-DTD (Document Type Definitions), XML Data, Namespaces; 
• Document Object Model, XSLT. Java Applets: Lifecycle of Applets; Applet context; Limitations of Applets
• Client Side JavaScript: Object Reference - Objects, Methods and Properties, Event Handlers;
• Language constructs - Statements and Operators.
• Server side technologies

13. CGI

• Java Servlets: HTTP Servlet Basics, Servlet Life Cycle, Session Tracking, Interservlet Communication
• Overview of ASP & JSP
• SSI: SSI Directives; SSI Environment Variables; SSI Formats.

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