Try free practice
Find your next step

Domain paper 308

CUET Computer Science / Information Practices

CUET paper 308 has one common Section A (database concepts, two SQL units and computer networks) and two alternative parts: B1 Computer Science and B2 Informatics Practices. Pick the part that matches your Class 12 subject; the two route sets below follow that split. Section A and B1 map closely to the NCERT Class 12 Computer Science book, while B2 follows the NCERT Informatics Practices book. Expect many output-prediction items on Python, Pandas and SQL, so practise dry runs by hand. Networks, security and societal impacts reward precise definitions.

  • 22 units
  • 50 questions · 60 min
  • +5 / −1 marking
  • NCERT Class 12 Computer Science and Informatics Practices
  • 64,879 appeared in 2026

What to study in each unit

Based on the official NTA 2026 syllabus, mapped to NCERT chapters.

This paper has 2 routes: Section A + B1: Computer Science or Section A + B2: Informatics Practices. Rows marked with a route belong only to that option; unmarked rows are common to both.

UnitWhat to studyNCERT
Section ADatabase concepts
  • File system limits: redundancy, inconsistency, unauthorised access and data dependence; what a DBMS adds
  • Relation, attribute, tuple, domain, degree and cardinality
  • Candidate, primary, alternate and foreign keys, with how a foreign key links two tables
  • Relational algebra: selection, projection, union, set difference and Cartesian product (degree adds, cardinality multiplies)
  • Degree
  • Cardinality
  • Alternate key
  • Foreign key
CS Ch 8
Section ASQL I
  • DDL (CREATE, ALTER, DROP), DQL (SELECT) and DML (INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE); DELETE versus DROP
  • MySQL data types such as CHAR versus VARCHAR, INT, FLOAT and DATE
  • SELECT with WHERE, BETWEEN, IN, LIKE with % and _, and IS NULL
  • POWER(), ROUND(N,D) and MOD()
  • UPPER/LOWER, MID/SUBSTRING/SUBSTR, LENGTH, LEFT, RIGHT, INSTR (0 if absent), LTRIM, RTRIM, TRIM
  • DDL
  • ALTER TABLE
  • INSTR()
  • RTRIM()
CS Ch 9 · IP Ch 1
Section ASQL II
  • NOW(), DATE(), MONTH(), MONTHNAME(), YEAR(), DAY() and DAYNAME()
  • MAX, MIN, AVG, SUM and COUNT ignore NULLs; COUNT(*) counts every row
  • GROUP BY with HAVING (filters groups) versus WHERE (filters rows); ORDER BY ASC/DESC
  • UNION, INTERSECT, MINUS and Cartesian product; equi-join on a common column using two tables
  • COUNT(*)
  • HAVING
  • Equi-join
CS Ch 9 · IP Ch 1
Section ANetworks
  • ARPANET to the Internet; PAN, LAN, MAN and WAN with examples
  • Modem, Ethernet card (NIC), RJ45, repeater, hub, switch, router and gateway
  • Mesh, ring, bus, star and tree topologies: cabling, failure effects and cost
  • MAC address (48-bit, burnt into the NIC) versus IP address (IPv4 32-bit, logical, can change)
  • Internet (the network) versus the World Wide Web (a service on it)
  • Switch
  • Gateway
  • MAC address
  • Star topology
CS Ch 10 · IP Ch 5
B1: Python exceptions and filesSection A + B1: Computer Science
  • Syntax errors versus exceptions; built-in ones such as ZeroDivisionError, NameError, TypeError, ValueError, IndexError, KeyError, IOError
  • raise and assert; try-except-else-finally and the order in which the blocks run
  • Text versus binary files; open(), close() and the with clause; modes r, w, a, r+, w+, a+, rb, wb
  • read(), readline(), readlines(), write(), writelines(); tell() and seek() offsets
  • pickle.dump() and pickle.load() for binary files
  • finally clause
  • File mode
  • seek()
  • Pickling
CS Ch 1–2
B1: StacksSection A + B1: Computer Science
  • LIFO principle; push, pop, peek/top, isEmpty, overflow and underflow
  • List implementation with append() and pop()
  • Infix, prefix and postfix notation; operator precedence
  • Infix-to-postfix conversion with a stack
  • Evaluating a postfix expression by pushing operands and applying each operator to the top two
  • LIFO
  • Postfix
  • Underflow
CS Ch 3
B1: QueuesSection A + B1: Computer Science
  • FIFO principle with front and rear; enqueue, dequeue, isEmpty, peek, size
  • List implementation with append() and pop(0)
  • Deque: insertion and deletion at both ends, usable as a stack or a queue
  • Applications such as print queues and palindrome checking with a deque
  • FIFO
  • Deque
  • Dequeue
CS Ch 4
B1: SearchingSection A + B1: Computer Science
  • Linear search: works on any list; best case 1 comparison, worst case n
  • Binary search: needs a sorted list; halves the range with mid = (low + high) // 2
  • Dry runs counting comparisons; worst case about log2 n for binary search
  • Hashing with the remainder method h(x) = x % table size; collision and the idea of collision resolution
  • Binary search
  • Hash function
  • Collision
CS Ch 6
B1: SortingSection A + B1: Computer Science
  • Bubble sort: adjacent swaps push the largest element to the end each pass
  • Selection sort: select the minimum of the unsorted part and swap it into place
  • Insertion sort: insert each element into the sorted part on its left
  • Passes needed, best and worst cases; all three are O(n²) in the worst case
  • Pass
  • Swap
  • Time complexity
CS Ch 5
B1: Understanding dataSection A + B1: Computer Science
  • Structured versus unstructured data; data collection, storage and processing
  • Mean, median (sort first) and mode
  • Range and standard deviation as measures of spread
  • Choosing median over mean when there are outliers
  • Median
  • Range
  • Standard deviation
CS Ch 7
B1: Database conceptsSection A + B1: Computer Science
  • Problems with file systems and how a DBMS solves them
  • Relation, attribute, tuple, domain, degree and cardinality
  • Candidate, primary, alternate and foreign keys
  • Selection, projection, union, set difference and Cartesian product
  • Candidate key
  • Relation
  • Projection
CS Ch 8
B1: SQLSection A + B1: Computer Science
  • Constraints: NOT NULL, UNIQUE, DEFAULT, PRIMARY KEY and FOREIGN KEY
  • CREATE, ALTER (ADD, MODIFY, DROP column), DROP, INSERT, UPDATE and DELETE
  • Math, text and date functions listed in the outline
  • Aggregates with GROUP BY, HAVING and ORDER BY
  • UNION, INTERSECT, MINUS, Cartesian product and joins
  • PRIMARY KEY
  • UNIQUE
  • GROUP BY
CS Ch 9
B1: Computer networksSection A + B1: Computer Science
  • Evolution from ARPANET; PAN, LAN, MAN and WAN
  • Modem, NIC, repeater, hub, switch, router and gateway
  • Mesh, ring, bus, star and tree topologies
  • MAC versus IP address; Internet, WWW and the Internet of Things
  • DNS: domain names, DNS servers and name resolution
  • DNS
  • Router
  • Hub
CS Ch 10
B1: Data communicationSection A + B1: Computer Science
  • Simplex, half-duplex and full-duplex; circuit versus packet switching
  • Twisted pair, coaxial cable and optical fibre; radio waves, microwaves and infrared
  • Bluetooth and WLAN; mobile generations 1G to 5G
  • HTTP, FTP, PPP, SMTP and TCP/IP: what each does
  • Bandwidth in Hz, KHz, MHz; data transfer rate in bps, Kbps, Mbps, Gbps, Tbps
  • Half-duplex
  • Packet switching
  • Bandwidth
  • PPP
CS Ch 11
B1: SecuritySection A + B1: Computer Science
  • Malware: virus (needs a host and a user action), worm (standalone, self-replicating), ransomware, Trojan, spyware, adware, keyloggers
  • Antivirus methods: signature-based, sandbox and heuristic detection
  • Spam, cookies, firewall, and HTTP versus HTTPS
  • Hackers (ethical/white hat) versus crackers (black hat)
  • Denial of service, intrusion, snooping and eavesdropping
  • Worm
  • Firewall
  • HTTPS
  • DoS attack
CS Ch 12
B2: Database queries with SQLSection A + B2: Informatics Practices
  • POWER, ROUND, MOD; UPPER/LOWER, MID, LENGTH, LEFT, RIGHT, INSTR, LTRIM, RTRIM, TRIM
  • NOW, DATE, MONTH, MONTHNAME, YEAR, DAY, DAYNAME
  • MAX, MIN, AVG, SUM, COUNT and COUNT(*); GROUP BY, HAVING, ORDER BY
  • UNION, INTERSECT, MINUS, Cartesian product and equi-join
  • MONTHNAME()
  • Aggregate function
  • Equi-join
IP Ch 1
B2: Pandas ISection A + B2: Informatics Practices
  • Pandas, NumPy and Matplotlib roles; Series versus NumPy ndarray
  • Series from list, ndarray, dictionary or scalar; index alignment in arithmetic gives NaN
  • head(), tail(), loc (labels, end included) and iloc (positions, end excluded); Boolean indexing
  • DataFrame from dictionary of Series or list of dictionaries; add, delete (drop) and rename rows and columns
  • read_csv() and to_csv(); attributes such as shape, size, index, columns, T
  • Series
  • DataFrame
  • loc / iloc
  • NaN
IP Ch 2
B2: Pandas IISection A + B2: Informatics Practices
  • max, min, count, sum, mean, median, mode, quantile, std and var (NaN skipped by default)
  • groupby() with aggregation; sort_values() and sort_index()
  • reset_index(), set_index(), pivot() and pivot_table()
  • isnull(), dropna() and fillna() for missing values
  • Moving data between Pandas and MySQL with read_sql and to_sql
  • groupby()
  • fillna()
  • Quartile
IP Ch 3
B2: MatplotlibSection A + B2: Informatics Practices
  • plot(), bar(), hist(), pie(), scatter() and boxplot(); frequency polygon from a histogram
  • Choosing a chart: trends, comparisons, distributions, parts of a whole, relationships
  • Customising colour, linestyle, linewidth and marker; xlabel, ylabel, title, legend
  • savefig() and show(); Pandas plot(kind=...)
  • Histogram
  • Box plot
  • savefig()
IP Ch 4
B2: Networks and webSection A + B2: Informatics Practices
  • LAN, MAN, WAN; modem, hub, switch, repeater, router, gateway; star, bus, tree, mesh
  • Internet, URL and WWW; email, chat and VoIP
  • Website versus web page; static versus dynamic pages; web server and hosting
  • Browsers, settings, add-ons and plug-ins, and cookies
  • URL
  • Dynamic web page
  • Web hosting
  • Cookie
IP Ch 5
B2: Societal impactsSection A + B2: Informatics Practices
  • Active and passive digital footprints; net and communication etiquette
  • IPR: copyright, patent, trademark; plagiarism and infringement
  • Licensing: GPL, Apache, FOSS and Creative Commons licences (CC BY, BY-SA, BY-ND, BY-NC)
  • Cybercrime: hacking, phishing, ransomware, cyberbullying, identity theft; IT Act 2000
  • E-waste hazards and management; eyesight, posture and ergonomic concerns
  • Digital footprint
  • CC BY-SA
  • Phishing
  • IT Act
IP Ch 6
B2: Project-based learningSection A + B2: Informatics Practices
  • Project-based learning: identify the problem, plan, gather information, build, test and present
  • Approaches for solving projects in a group
  • Components of teamwork: communicate, listen, share, respect and help others
  • Short project descriptions in the NCERT chapter as practice
  • Teamwork
  • Project planning
IP Ch 7

Know the syllabus? Test yourself.10 original Computer Science / Information Practices questions with explanations. Free, no sign-up.

Start the 10-question test

Official reference: NTA CUET UG 2026 Computer Science / Information Practices syllabus (paper 308, Computer Science / Information Practices) · Checked 4 Nov 2026 · Read the official PDF (opens in a new tab) · Study notes draw on: NTA CUET (UG) 2026 syllabus: Computer Science / Informatics Practices (308) (opens in a new tab), NCERT Class 12 Computer Science textbook (rationalised, reprint 2026-27) (opens in a new tab), NCERT Class 12 Informatics Practices textbook (rationalised, reprint 2026-27) (opens in a new tab). This is the 2026 syllabus, not a confirmed 2027 syllabus.