Tag: questionmark perception

Topic not found error on Perception quiz created using QML

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I’ve been working on several custom Questionmark Perception quizzes lately. As sometimes happens, it is not possible to use the Authoring Manager’s Question Editor to create the questions, so I created an example question in the Editor that was as close as possible to the one I wanted, then exported it to QML and modified it to get the custom structure that I wanted. Then I duplicated it and wrote the entire quiz in QML.

When I tried out the quiz created by importing these questions, the quiz came up with no problems, but on trying to submit the answers, it gave a “Topic not found” error.

It turns out that you must have a TOPIC attribute stated in the QML or it will error out. I don’t recall this being the case before, but it definitely is the case now.

RIGHT: 

<QUESTION ID="3084430213002589" DESCRIPTION="01. Question title goes here" TOPIC=topic titlesubtopic title" STATUS="Normal"> 
<ANSWER QTYPE="FIB">

WRONG:

<QUESTION ID="3084430213002589" DESCRIPTION="01. Question title goes here" STATUS="Normal"> 
<ANSWER QTYPE="FIB">
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Mixing Question Types Within a Question in Perception Quizzes

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We had a request to mix fill-in-the-blank type choices with select-a-blank choices within a single question. Questionmark Perception really isn’t set up to do this, so of course I had to see if I could get around it’s limitations. You can add HTML and javascript to a question though, so I thought of this nefarious back-door trick to fool Perception into taking both answers. Unfortunately it still requires accuracy on the part of the user, so perhaps it is not very useful. They must not type spaces, and must type the answer first, then select the units – in order. That’s a lot to ask.

On the other hand, this particular quiz was set up primarily because the users are required to demonstrate absolutely perfect accuracy in this topic, so perhaps it is acceptable in this type of situation. I’ll probably add a javascript that strips spaces, too.

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Troubleshooting Questionmark Perception database connections

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We’ve had just about every sort of database connection issue with our two Questionmark Perception servers, so in the interest of saving someone else the kind of struggles we’ve gone through, here are some things to look for.

  1. tnsnames.ora issues:
    There is a file that lives in a subdirectory of the Oracle folder – this directory may be called Oracle_Home, Oracle9 etc, and is often but not always in the root directory of the server.

    A typical path to the tnsnames.ora file on a server is

    E:\Oracle_HomenetworkAdmintnsnames.ora

    There are a variety of things that could be incorrect in this file.

    1. Hidden control characters brought in during copy and paste:
      If you copy and paste the settings from some email programs into this file, you may be adding hidden control characters to the tnsnames.ora file. You won’t be able to see them but they’re there, and they’re screwing things up.

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