Your most important questions answered

Advanced Level Exam

What is the difference between a certification body and a training provider?

 

The iSAQB has stipulated that there be a formal and organizational separation between training course providers and certification bodies – hence these two different roles. Training course providers offer training, courses, workshops in order to prepare you for the CPSA-F examination for instance, or your CPSA-A examination project.

Certification bodies organize the CPSA-F and CPSA-A examination – but must not offer any training or seminars in this area themselves.

What is the difference between the three system types in the selection of examination tasks?

Information system

An information system is used to retrieve information and process business transactions. Users in different roles work collaboratively on an overall result. The system takes care of the storage, input and output, validation and processing of the data for the users. The aggregation of data into reports also occurs.

Information systems are often used in a company’s intranet. The users in an intranet usually are expected to have a behaviour that is predictable (e.g. with respect to scalability) and regular within certain limits (not a “wilderness” like on the Internet).

Often rather complex business processes are important, which can make it challenging to properly authorise users for the business processes.

Information systems can also be web-based, but they are not a “web system” (see the next section for a more precise definition).

Web system

A web system basically serves the same purposes as an information system. The difference lies in the target group and the type of use. A web system is intended for use on the Internet (the “wilderness”). The Internet is an environment in which large numbers of users, heavily fluctuating loads and occasionally malicious attackers can be expected.

Due to the use of the Internet, higher network latencies are often to be expected than with in-house applications, which can have a negative effect on the system response time behaviour and thus (also) its usability.

Attention must be paid to these special circumstances when designing a web system (in addition to the business logic itself).

Embedded system

An embedded system is directly connected to its environment through sensors and can also influence the environment through actuators. The tasks of an embedded system are often measurement and control of processes in its environment. In the case of information or web systems, on the other hand, the environment consists exclusively of human users or other IT systems. In contrast to IT and web systems, resources (e.g., memory, energy, computing time) in embedded systems are limited and architectures for those systems have to consider this. Often, latencies are important, that is, the reaction time to external events and their handling. Special cases are embedded real-time systems in which timely task processing is essential, as well as safety-critical systems.

What should I consider regarding credit points?
The credit points can be revaluated by the iSAQB every 12 months. If you plan your training measures over some years you should consider this, in case you focus mostly on the number of points for the individual seminars. This revaluation can apply to the number of points as well as to the distribution to the areas of competence. It is possible that credit points are no longer rewarded for one of the three competence areas, so you would have to cover this competence area with another seminar. However, there have only been very few changes so far.
Will the assignment for the Advanced Level exam be subject to a plagiarism check?

All assignments by participants of the Advanced Level examination are first subjected to a plagiarism check by the certification bodies, which results in an examination report. This examination report is then forwarded to the responsible examiners for evaluation, along with the assignment.

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