The Master Question File

The Master Question File

When I was working as a pilot in the 58th Special Operations Group, one way the crewmembers kept current on their professional knowledge was by studying various regulations, rulebooks, and manuals. Periodically, we were tested on this by a series of multiple-choice questions from the "Master Question File", or MQF. The MQF was available to all aircrew provided no answers were given; the aircrew simply had to look up all the answers.

It occurred to me that the Palm devices available at the time represented a great value for the aircrew member if a quiz program could be written; if a database could be made which stored the MQF, and allowed the crewmember to set values for the "correct" answer, the program could interactively quiz the crewmember in a fast-drill format, asking only the questions that the user had failed to answer correctly in the last round.

The program, once conceived, was actually quite simple, consisting of a single form event handler. The problem lay in creating the databases. This was done by writing a ruby script which would manipulate PalmOS databases (pdbtools.rb) and making another script (make_mqf_pdb) which would take data from the existing MQF and convert it into an uploadable PalmOS PDB database.

The resulting application was a great success for all those who used it--a number which unfortunately could be counted on one hand. Still, it was the first practical use of ePalm and thus deserves a place in the samples directory. While the MQF questions for our aircrew are not mine to share, a simple example quiz of two questions is provided in test_quiz.txt and thus converted to test_quiz.pdb for your amusement.

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