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I declare this is my own work.

A-level
COMPUTER SCIENCE
Paper 2
Monday 19 June 2023 Morning Time allowed: 2 hours 30 minutes
Materials
For Examiner’s Use
For this paper you must have:
• a calculator. Question Mark
1
Instructions
• Use black ink or black ball-point pen. 2
• Fill in the boxes at the top of this page. 3
• Answer all questions. 4
• You must answer the questions in the spaces provided. Do not write outside
the box around each page or on blank pages. 5
• If you need extra space for your answer(s), use the lined pages at the end of 6
this book. Write the question number against your answer(s). 7
• Do all rough work in this book. Cross through any work you do not want to
8
be marked.
9
Information 10
• The marks for questions are shown in brackets.
11
• The maximum mark for this paper is 100.
12
Advice TOTAL
• In some questions you are required to indicate your answer by completely
shading a lozenge alongside the appropriate answer as shown.
• If you want to change your answer you must cross out your original answer as
shown.
• If you wish to return to an answer previously crossed out, ring the answer
you now wish to select as shown.

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Answer all questions. box

0 1 . 1 A sound is sampled and recorded digitally. The sound is sampled at a rate of 48 000
samples per second (Hz) for 3 minutes using a 16-bit sample resolution.

Calculate the size of the digital recording, giving your answer in mebibytes.

Give your answer rounded to 2 decimal places.

You should show your working.

[2 marks]

Answer mebibytes

0 1 . 2 The highest frequency component in a different sound is 15 000 Hz.

What is the minimum sampling rate that should be used when recording this sound to
ensure that all the frequencies in the original waveform are preserved, so that when
the recording is played back the original sound is recreated accurately?
[1 mark]

Answer Hz

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0 1 . 3 Figure 1 shows part of the process of playing back a sound that has been sampled. box

The binary sound data is used to generate an electrical waveform.

Figure 1

A hardware component on a sound card carries out the process shown in Figure 1.

State the name of this component.

[1 mark]
4

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0 2 Figure 2 shows some of the fields contained in a packet, transmitted on a box

computer network.

Figure 2

Destination Source
Payload (data) Checksum
Address Address

0 2 . 1 Name two fields typically included in a packet which are not shown in Figure 2.
[2 marks]

Field 1

Field 2

0 2 . 2 Explain what the checksum is used for and outline how the checksum’s value will
be determined.
[2 marks]

Explain what the checksum is used for

Outline how the checksum’s value will be determined

0 2 . 3 Packets of data are transmitted using packet switching.

Describe the role of a router in packet switching.

[2 marks]

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0 3 . 1 Encrypt the plaintext SECURITY using the Caesar cipher with a key of 4. box

[1 mark]

Plaintext Ciphertext

SECURITY

The Caesar cipher is an example of a substitution cipher.

A different substitution cipher encrypts letters using the method shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3

Plaintext A B C D E F G H I J K L MN O P Q R S T U VWX Y Z
                         
Ciphertext C D J R K Y G S Q F E P W O H V L I U Z T B N A X M

0 3 . 2 State one weakness that both the Caesar cipher and the cipher shown in Figure 3
have which means they can be easily cracked.
[1 mark]

0 3 . 3 State one reason why the cipher in Figure 3 is harder to crack than the
Caesar cipher.
[1 mark]

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0 3 . 4 The Vernam cipher, unlike the Caesar cipher, can be perfectly secure. box

State two conditions that must be met for the Vernam cipher to offer perfect security.
[2 marks]

Condition 1:

Condition 2:

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ANSWER IN THE SPACES PROVIDED

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0 4 . 1 Describe how the fetch-execute cycle is used to carry out machine code instructions box

and how the hardware of a computer could be improved so that programs can be
executed more quickly.

Your response should include a description of what happens during each stage of the
fetch-execute cycle.
[12 marks]

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0 4 . 2 An interrupt may occur during the fetch-execute cycle. box

Describe what an interrupt is and explain the purpose of interrupts.

[2 marks]

14

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ANSWER IN THE SPACES PROVIDED

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0 5 A company operates a cinema which has three different screens. Each screen has a box

capacity determined by the number of seats the screen has.

Each seat is identified by a unique seat number for the screen it is in, but two seats in
different screens can have the same number. A specific seat is classified as being of
one of two types: standard or deluxe.

On a particular day, there will be several showings of films in each of the screens. A
screen might show the same film multiple times or it might show different films at
different times of day.

Customers make bookings to go to the cinema. Each booking is for one specific
showing of a film. A booking is for one or more seats, and the customer can select
the individual seats that they want to book when they make the booking.

When a booking is made, if the customer has not previously made a booking, the
customer’s first name, last name and telephone number are recorded. If the booking
is for more than one seat then only the details of the person who made the booking
are recorded – the system does not store the details of who will be sitting in each
seat. If a customer has made a booking previously then the details that were stored
about them when the previous booking was made are re-used.

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0 5 . 1 Develop a fully normalised design for a relational database to store the information box

required by the cinema. To help you, the Screen, Seat, Film and Showing relations
have already been defined in Figure 4.

Figure 4

Screen(ScreenNumber, Capacity)

Seat(SeatNumber, ScreenNumber, SeatType)

Film(FilmID, FilmName, Duration, Certificate)

Showing(ShowingID, ScreenNumber, FilmID, ShowTime, ShowDate)

Using the format shown in Figure 4 list the other three relations that will need to be
created, together with the attributes that each relation will contain.

Underline the attribute(s) that will form the entity identifier (primary key) in
each relation.
[5 marks]

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0 5 . 2 The cinema had to be closed on the 29th March 2023 so that some maintenance box

could take place.

The SQL query in Figure 5 was written to delete all of the showings on this date.
Some errors were made in the query.

Figure 5

DELETE
FROM Showing, Film
WHERE ShowDate = 29/03/2023

Describe two errors that have been made in the query.

Do not refer to the use of semi-colons in your response.

[2 marks]

Error 1

Error 2

0 5 . 3 Describe an issue that could arise in the database if a query to delete all of the
showings that had been scheduled to take place on the 29th March 2023
was executed.
[2 marks]

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0 5 . 4 The booking system can be accessed through a website which uses CRUD box

and REST.

Describe what Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) are used for in a

RESTful application.
[1 mark]

0 5 . 5 Shade one lozenge on the row that correctly shows how REST enables CRUD to be
mapped to database functions using SQL.
[1 mark]

A GETFETCH, POSTCREATE, DELETEDELETE, PUTUPDATE

B GETSELECT, POSTINSERT, DELETEDELETE, PUTUPDATE

C GETSELECT, POSTINSERT, DELETEDELETE, PUTCREATE

D GETSELECT, POSTUPDATE, DELETEDELETE, PUTINSERT

E GETUPDATE, POSTSELECT, DELETEDELETE, PUTCREATE

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0 5 . 6 JSON is used to encode datasets when they are passed between the server and the box

booking application. Figure 6 shows an example of how data about some films can
be encoded using JSON.

Figure 6

{"Films":[
{ "FilmID": 4301,
"FilmName": "Alien Doomsday",
"Duration": 106,
"Certificate": "12A" },
{ "FilmID": 2098,
"FilmName": "Tom's Amazing Adventure",
"Duration": 84,
"Certificate": "U" }
]}

State two reasons why JSON might have been chosen to encode the data instead of
XML, assuming that the software supports both methods.
[2 marks]

Reason 1

Reason 2
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Question parts 06.1 and 06.2 use a normalised floating point representation with an box

8-bit mantissa and a 4-bit exponent, both stored using two’s complement.

0 6 . 1 Figure 7 shows a floating point representation of a number:

Figure 7

0 1 1 0 1 0 0 0 1 1 0 1
Mantissa Exponent

Calculate the decimal equivalent of the number in Figure 7.

You should show your working.

[2 marks]

Answer

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Question parts 06.1 and 06.2 use a normalised floating point representation with an box

8-bit mantissa and a 4-bit exponent, both stored using two’s complement.

0 6 . 2 Write the normalised floating point representation of the decimal value –23.25 in the
boxes below.

You should show your working.

[3 marks]

Answer

0 6 . 3 On each row of Table 1, state the name of the Type of error that has occurred in the
Situation that is described.
[2 marks]

Table 1

Situation Type of error

A calculation is performed and the result
of the calculation is so close to zero that
the number that is stored is zero.
A calculation is performed and the result
of the calculation is too large to fit in the
available number of bits.
A decimal value is converted to floating
point but it cannot be represented exactly
in the available number of bits.

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Question parts 06.1 and 06.2 use a normalised floating point representation with an box

8-bit mantissa and a 4-bit exponent, both stored using two’s complement.

0 6 . 4 Explain how the floating point representation used in Question parts 06.1 and 06.2
could be modified to represent numbers more precisely, without changing the total
number of bits used to represent a number.
[1 mark]

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0 7 For question parts 07.1 and 07.2 you should assume that memory locations and box

registers store 8-bit values. These question parts use the AQA assembly language
instruction set in Table 3 on page 23.

Assembly language instructions can be used to perform masking, which allows the
values of individual bits or groups of bits within a number to be isolated or set
independently of the values of the other bits in the number.

For example, to isolate the values of the rightmost four bits of an 8-bit number, the
number could be ANDed with the binary value 00001111.

The assembly language instruction AND R0, R1, #15 performs a bitwise logical
AND operation between the value in register R1 and the number 15 (equivalent to
00001111 in binary), storing the result in register R0.

0 7 . 1 In binary, show the result of applying the instruction AND R0, R1, #15 when
register R1 contains the decimal value 70 which is 46 in hexadecimal.
[1 mark]

R1 0 1 0 0 0 1 1 0

15 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1

R0

0 7 . 2 In binary, show the result of applying the instruction ORR R0, R1, #48 when
register R1 contains the decimal value 6 which is 6 in hexadecimal.
[1 mark]

R1 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0

48 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0

R0

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0 7 . 3 A computer program is required to display the value of the contents of a memory box

location that stores an 8-bit value. The value should be displayed on the screen of the
computer in hexadecimal.

Part of the process required to do this is to convert the value stored in the memory
location into the correct ASCII codes for each of the two digits that represent that
value in hexadecimal.

For example, if the memory location contained:

1 0 0 1 1 1 1 0

which is 9E in hexadecimal, then the ASCII codes of the characters that need to be
displayed are:

0 0 1 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 1

The first of these is the ASCII code of the character 9, the second is the ASCII code
of the character E.

Write an assembly language program using the AQA assembly language instruction
set that will load a value from memory location 100 and store the ASCII code of the
first (lefthand) digit of the hexadecimal representation of this value in memory location
101 and the ASCII code of the second (righthand) digit of the hexadecimal
representation of this value in memory location 102.

Your program should use masking and/or shifting to complete this task.

The ASCII codes of the hexadecimal digits are shown in Table 2 and the AQA
assembly language instruction set is in Table 3 on page 23.

Table 2

ASCII Code ASCII Code

Digit Decimal Binary Digit Decimal Binary
0 48 0110000 8 56 0111000
1 49 0110001 9 57 0111001
2 50 0110010 A 65 1000001
3 51 0110011 B 66 1000010
4 52 0110100 C 67 1000011
5 53 0110101 D 68 1000100
6 54 0110110 E 69 1000101
7 55 0110111 F 70 1000110

[10 marks]

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This table is included so that you can answer question parts 07.1, 07.2 and 07.3. box

Table 3 – Standard AQA assembly language instruction set

LDR Rd, <memory ref> Load the value stored in the memory location specified by
<memory ref> into register d
STR Rd, <memory ref> Store the value that is in register d into the memory location
specified by <memory ref>
ADD Rd, Rn, <operand2> Add the value specified in <operand2> to the value in
register n and store the result in register d
SUB Rd, Rn, <operand2> Subtract the value specified by <operand2> from the value
in register n and store the result in register d
MOV Rd, <operand2> Copy the value specified by <operand2> into register d
CMP Rn, <operand2> Compare the value stored in register n with the value
specified by <operand2>
B <label> Always branch to the instruction at position <label> in
the program.
B<condition> <label> Branch to the instruction at position <label> if the last
comparison met the criterion specified by <condition>.
Possible values for <condition> and their meanings are:
EQ: equal to NE: not equal to
GT: greater than LT: less than
AND Rd, Rn, <operand2> Perform a bitwise logical AND operation between the value
in register n and the value specified by <operand2> and
store the result in register d
ORR Rd, Rn, <operand2> Perform a bitwise logical OR operation between the value in
register n and the value specified by <operand2> and store
the result in register d
EOR Rd, Rn, <operand2> Perform a bitwise logical XOR (exclusive or) operation
between the value in register n and the value specified by
<operand2> and store the result in register d
MVN Rd, <operand2> Perform a bitwise logical NOT operation on the value
specified by <operand2> and store the result in register d
LSL Rd, Rn, <operand2> Logically shift left the value stored in register n by the
number of bits specified by <operand2> and store the result
in register d
LSR Rd, Rn, <operand2> Logically shift right the value stored in register n by the
number of bits specified by <operand2> and store the result
in register d
HALT Stops the execution of the program.

Labels: A label is placed in the code by writing an identifier followed by a colon (:). To refer to a
label, the identifier of the label is placed after the branch instruction.
Interpretation of <operand2>

<operand2> can be interpreted in two different ways, depending on whether the first character
is a # or an R:

• # – use the decimal value specified after the #, eg #25 means use the decimal value 25
• Rm – use the value stored in register m, eg R6 means use the value stored in register 6

The available general-purpose registers that the programmer can use are numbered 0–12

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0 8 A supermarket chain uses a system which stores details of all of the products that it box

sells and the sales that it makes.

The data that the supermarket stores is Big Data.

0 8 . 1 Two characteristics of Big Data are that the volume of data means it is too big to fit on
a single server and the data comes in a variety of forms.

Describe the third characteristic of Big Data.

[1 mark]

The graph schema in Figure 8 represents part of a fact-based model of the dataset
that the supermarket has built.

Figure 8

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0 8 . 2 Modify the graph schema in Figure 8 to represent the following additional facts. box

• The Bath store sells chocolate biscuits.

• There are 20 individual biscuits in a packet of iced biscuits and each packet
costs £1.50
• Both chocolate biscuits and iced biscuits are made by the company Delicious
Snacks. The company has 75 employees and also makes cake bars.
[3 marks]

0 8 . 3 One approach to dealing with Big Data is to write code that can be distributed to run
across more than one server.

State two features of functional programming languages that make it easier to write
code that can be distributed to run across more than one server.
[2 marks]

Feature 1

Feature 2

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0 9 The truth table in Table 4 represents the operation of a logic system. box

Table 4

Inputs Outputs
A B C D
0 0 0 0
0 1 0 1
1 0 0 1
1 1 1 0

0 9 . 1 In the space below, draw a logic circuit that would produce the outputs shown in
Table 4 for the given inputs.

To achieve full marks for your response, your circuit should use exactly two gates.
[3 marks]

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0 9 . 2 Explain the purpose of the circuit that you have drawn that produces the outputs given box

in Table 4.
[1 mark]

0 9 . 3 Using the rules of Boolean algebra, simplify the following Boolean expression.

���������������
� + (B
� + B ∙ (A
A∙B � ∙ C))
You must show your working.
[4 marks]

Working

8
Answer

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1 0 . 1 A data communication system uses asynchronous data transmission with even box

parity to send character codes that are encoded using 7-bit ASCII.

Figure 9 shows five binary patterns.

Figure 9

Pattern 1: 1 0 1 1 1 0 1 1 0 1

Pattern 2: 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 0

Pattern 3: 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 0

Pattern 4: 1 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0

Pattern 5: 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0

How many of the binary patterns in Figure 9 could represent valid transmissions of a
single character in this data communication system?
[1 mark]

1 0 . 2 An alternative data communication system uses synchronous data transmission.

Describe what synchronous data transmission is.

[1 mark]

1 0 . 3 Describe one limitation of the use of parity bits for managing errors.
[1 mark]

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1 0 . 4 Shade one lozenge to indicate which of the lines on the graph in Figure 10 shows the box

correct relationship between the bandwidth and the bit rate of a

communications medium.
[1 mark]

Figure 10

A Line A

B Line B

C Line C
4
D Line D

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1 1 An email is being sent from User A on Computer A to User B on Computer B. box

1 1 . 1 Describe the role that will be played by the transport layer of the TCP/IP stack in the
transmission of the email from Computer A to an email server.
[3 marks]

1 1 . 2 Whilst being transported across the Internet, the email data passes through a number
of routers and one gateway.

Describe the additional functionality of a gateway, beyond that of a router.

[1 mark]

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1 1 . 3 State the name and purpose of two application layer protocols that will be used to box

transfer the email from Computer A to Computer B.

Each protocol must have a different purpose.

[4 marks]

Protocol 1 name

Protocol 1 purpose

Protocol 2 name

Protocol 2 purpose

1 1 . 4 The email servers involved in the transmission of the email use well-known ports.

Explain what a well-known port is and why an email server must use one.
[2 marks]

What a well-known port is

Why an email server uses a well-known port

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1 1 . 5 The email message needs to be sent securely as it contains confidential information. box

The message will be encrypted using asymmetric encryption. To enable Computer B

to authenticate that the message was sent by Computer A, a digital signature will also
be sent with the message.

Describe how:
• Computer A will encrypt the message and create the digital signature
• Computer B will decrypt the message and verify that it was sent by Computer A.

In your response you should refer to the specific keys that will be used in this process.
[6 marks]

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16

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1 2 Figure 11 shows a function, FunctionZ, written in a functional box

programming language.

Figure 11

FunctionZ [] = 0
FunctionZ (x:xs) = x + 2 * FunctionZ (xs)

• [] is the empty list.

• (x:xs) as the argument to a function splits a list into two parts, the head x and
tail xs.

1 2 . 1 Complete Table 5 by writing the value of the argument passed to each call
of FunctionZ and the value returned by each call, when
FunctionZ [4, 2, 5, 3] is evaluated.
[3 marks]

Table 5

Call number Argument Value returned

1 [4, 2, 5, 3]

1 2 . 2 All of the values in lists passed to FunctionZ as the argument are members of the
set of integers.

Shade one lozenge to indicate the co-domain of the function.

[1 mark]

A The set of integers

B The set of irrational numbers

C The set of natural numbers

D The set of rational numbers

E The set of real numbers 4

END OF QUESTIONS

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Question Additional page, if required.
number Write the question numbers in the left-hand margin.

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Question Additional page, if required.
number Write the question numbers in the left-hand margin.

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Question Additional page, if required.
number Write the question numbers in the left-hand margin.

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Question Additional page, if required.
number Write the question numbers in the left-hand margin.

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Copyright information

For confidentiality purposes, all acknowledgements of third-party copyright material are published in a separate booklet. This booklet is published after
each live examination series and is available for free download from www.aqa.org.uk.

Permission to reproduce all copyright material has been applied for. In some cases, efforts to contact copyright-holders may have been unsuccessful
and AQA will be happy to rectify any omissions of acknowledgements. If you have any queries please contact the Copyright Team.

Copyright © 2023 AQA and its licensors. All rights reserved.

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