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<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1">
<title>BOCA Team's Manual</title>
</head>
<body bgcolor="white" vlink="blue" link="blue">
<font size="5"><b>BOCA Online Contest Administrator</b></font>
<p><b>Reference Manual for teams<font size="5"> - </font>version
October/2011 (BOCA version 1.4.1+)</b></p>
<p><font size="1">Copyright (c) 2003-2010 Ulisses F. F. da Silva and Cassio
P. de Campos.<br>
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under
the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later
version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections,
no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license may be
found in <a
href="http://www.gnu.org/licenses/">http://www.gnu.org/licenses/</a></font></p>
<p>BOCA is a software for controlling a competition in the scope of the <i>ACM International
Collegiate Programming Contest</i>. It has been developed in PHP and the interaction between teams
and the system is performed using a <i>web browser</i>. In the following it is described
this interface and its main functions.</p>
<p><u>It is important that teams tested the system during the <i>warmup session</i>, before
the official contest, so any issue can be addressed in time. The warmup has exactly this
purpose. It is expected that teams submit correct and incorrect runs, as long as they <b>do not</b>
try to perform malicious operations in the system. It is also expected that clarifications be
submitted, and a small file to print.
</u></p>
<p>It is assumed here that the team has already logged in using the web browser and
the URL address provided to access the BOCA system. The URL varies from contest to contest,
so you have to ask the staff of your site about it. The login page contains the fields
username and password, which are provided by the staff of the contest. Usually the
username follows the format <b>teamX</b>, where <b>X</b> is the team number, but that is
not mandatory (again, check with the staff). If not speficied, the initial password is empty.</p>
<p>After the successful login, a page opens with the team identification in the upper-left
corner, and the clock of the contest in the upper-right corner. During the contest,
as the team gets YESes as balloons appear besides the team name.
Just below this information, a vertical menu has the following options:
<i>Problems, Runs, Score, Clarifications, Tasks, Backups, Options e Logout.</i></p>
<p><font size="4"><b>Problems</b></font></p>
<p>In this tab, the team sees the problems of the contest, together with the book of problem
descriptions (if available online). In <i>in-loco</i> contests, this tab is less important
given that a printed version of the booklet is distributed to the teams. Still, the column
named <b>Basename</b> provides to teams the name of the file that has to be used for each problem.
This is the name that has to be followed by the extension (depending on the language) and
also as the <u>name of the class containing the <i>public main</i> procedure</u> in Java.
Usually this information is also available in the booklet. Nevertheless, here the team can
check if their name is correct.
</p>
<p><font size="4"><b>Runs</b></font></p>
<p>This tab represents the actual information about the team's submissions, as well as provides
the interface to submit new <i>runs</i>. It is important for the team to select the correct
problem, language, and to choose the correct file for the submission. <b>Note that the file name
must follow the specification</b> in the booklet, and which shall also be available in the tab <i>Problems</i>.
Hence,
<ol>
<li>Use in the source-code the filename defined in the column <b>Basename</b> of the tab <i>Problems</i>.
Take care with small typos and the proper extension according to the chosen language.
</li>
<li>Choose the correct language and problem. It is not uncommon to happen submissions with wrong filename, language or problem.
</li>
<li>Make sure your code reads the input from the <b>standard input</b> and writes the output to the
<b>standard output</b>. Avoid writing anything to the <b>standard error</b>. Furthermore, make your
program exit the code zero in the final return or exit(.) call. By default, this indicates that no
error has happened during its execution.
</li>
</ol>
<p>In order to see the judgements of runs, the team must click on
the tab <i>Runs</i> and watch the list of submitted runs.
However, do not stop working while waiting for the answers. Even if the judges
are in the backstage working hard to reply to all submissions, this might take some time.
In the last part of the competition, the scoreboard is not updated, neither the runs are answered back
(the number of minutes from the end when this happens depends on the contest; usually it is something around
15 minutes, but this is informed by the staff). For each run, there is a set of standard answers that
exist in each contest (and they may vary depending on the contest). Still the common options are shown below:
<table border="1">
<tr>
<td nowrap>Answer</td><td>Description</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td nowrap>YES</td>
<td>Your code was properly compiled, run, and correctly generated the expected output for the problem.</td></tr>
<tr>
<td nowrap>NO: Wrong answer</td>
<td>Some times known as <i>Incorrect output</i>. It indicates that the code compiled and ran, however it
did not generated the expected output for the problem, given the input of the judges (which most certainly
is different from yours and is not available to you).</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td nowrap>NO: Time-limit Exceeded</td>
<td>The code compiled properly but spent more than the maximum amount of time defined for the given problem.
This time-limit is defined by the judges for each problem and is not disclosed to the teams.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td nowrap>NO: Runtime Error</td>
<td>The code compiled properly but achieved an error during its run, given the input of the judges. Some examples
of runtime error are: illegal memory access (seg. fault), illegal file access, excess of memory usage, etc.</td>
</tr>
<tr><td nowrap>NO: Compilation Error</td>
<td>The code has not compiled properly in the judges' computers. Note that you are expected to have compiled in your
own computer before submitting the code. So check the compilation options and versions in your
computer, and if you do not have a problem compiling it locally, ask a member of the staff for help.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td nowrap>NO: presentation Error</td>
<td>Also known as <i>output format error</i>, it means that your code compiled, ran, and generated the
expected output apart from some minor presentation issue, such as upper/lower-cases, acents or punctuations (the
definition of presentation error may vary in each contest and is defined by the judges who created the test set).</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td nowrap>NO: If possible, contact staff</td>
<td>This reply tells you to contact your local staff for help/asking about the issue, if at all possible.</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p><font size="4"><b>Score</b></font></p>
<p>This tab shows the scoreboard of the contest. If running as a multi-site competition, the scoreboard might also
contain teams from other sites, which can be identified by the <b>/X</b> after the team name, where <b>X</b> is the
site number of the corresponding team. Note that the scoreboard is not updated during the last part of the competition.
This is indicated accordingly.
</p>
<p><font size="4"><b>Clarifications</b></font></p>
<p>This tab can be used by the team to submit questions to the judges concerning the problems, their descriptions,
or any other aspect of the contest. If the question is specific to a problem of the test set, the team must select
the problem from the combo list. Otherwise, the option <i>General</i> is to be used. The text box is used to
write the question. It is also available in this tab all the replies to questions that were formulated by the
team, as well as questions formulated by other teams but that judges decided that the reply should be made
available to all the teams. Some facts:</p>
<ol>
<li><b>Teams must make questions regarding the problems and test set using only this interface, and not directly
to the staff or judges.</b>
</li>
<li>It is the team's responsibility to check the tab about <i>clarifications</i> during the contest
to check for new replies. Judges may also send general clarifications to teams, and they will appear in this tab.
</li>
</ol>
<p>BOCA allows judges to use a particular button named <u><i>No response</i></u>. If you receive this
reply it means that the question may not be answered by the judges, for instance because it is against
the rules to disclose such information, or because the judges understand that the
information asked is already available in the booklet of problem descriptions.</p>
<p><font size="4"><b>Tasks</b></font></p>
<p>This tab allows the team to send files for printing, as well as ask for help from a staff member (using
the button <i>S.O.S.</i>. To print a file, just select it from the disk and click on <i>Send</i>.
The help provided by the <i>staff</i> has to be only related to issues with the computers or other
physical problem, while questions about the test set, problem descriptions, etc must be send to the
judges using the tab <i>Clarifications</i>.</p>
<p><font size="4"><b>Backups</b></font></p>
<p>It is possible to send small files to BOCA in order to keep them safe in the server. This is
particularly useful if some drastic issue happens with your computer. This tab provides a way
for the teams to send and query back files that are stored in the server. Only very small files
are allowed, so it is recommended that you backup only plain text files (source code, inputs, etc)
and use a zip or tar.gz format to create a single file.
</p>
<br>
<p><font size="4"><b>Options</b></font></p>
<p>This tab shows the information of the team, such as <i>Username,
User</i> <i>full name </i>,<i> User description</i>. It is possible
for the team to update their password, although this is not necessary neither
recommended. Instead it is recommended that the admin who created the users already
specifies secret and safe password for all users.
</p>
<br>
</p>
<p><font size="4"><i><b>Logout</b></i></font></p>
<p>Button to log out from the team interface.</p>
<p><font size="4"><b>About BOCA and this document</b></font></p>
<p>BOCA System and this document have been created by Cassio Polpo de Campos and can be found at
<a href="http://www.ime.usp.br/~cassio/boca/">http://www.ime.usp.br/~cassio/boca/</a>.
An initial version of this document was made by Ulisses Furquim Freire da Silva.
</p>
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