1. What is D-FF? 
2. What is the basic difference between Latches and Flip flops? 
3. What is a multiplexer? 
4. How can you convert an SR Flip-flop to a JK Flip-flop? 
5. How can you convert an JK Flip-flop to a D Flip-flop? 
6. What is Race-around problem? How can you rectify it? 
7. Which semiconductor device is used as a voltage regulator and why? 
8. Explain an ideal voltage source? 
9. Explain zener breakdown and avalanche breakdown? 
10. What are the different types of filters? 
11. What is the need of filtering ideal response of filters and actual response of filters? 
12. What is sampling theorem? 
13. What is impulse response? 
14. Explain the advantages and disadvantages of FIR filters compared to IIR counterparts. 
15. What is CMRR? 
16. Explain half-duplex and full-duplex communication? 
17. Which range of signals is used for terrestrial transmission? 
18. Why is there need for modulation? 
19. Which type of modulation is used in TV transmission? 
20. Why we use vestigial side band (VSB-C3F) transmission for picture? 
21. When transmitting digital signals is it necessary to transmit some harmonics in addition to fundamental frequency? 
22. For asynchronous transmission, is it necessary to supply some synchronizing pulses additionally or to supply or to supply start and stop bit? 
23. BPFSK is more efficient than BFSK in presence of noise. Why? 
24. What is meant by pre-emphasis and de-emphasis? 
25. Explain 3 dB cutoff frequency? Why is it 3 dB, not 1 dB? 
26. Explain ASCII, EBCDIC? 
27. How to manufacture the CMOS inverter? 
28. What are the advantages of using C band for satellite communication?
29. What frequency bands are used in Satellite Communication? 
30. what is the difference between latch and flipflop?what is the main difference between 8085 and 8086 processors?
31. What is the purpose of the package around a microprocessor silicon die? 
32. How can we identify how many states the ripple counter is having by looking at the figure as it can also have some invalid states? 
33. Design gray to binary code converter? 
34. What is a BCD? What are its advantages and disadvantages? Why is an excess-3 code is called an unweighted code? 

List of interview questions relating to the new job / company

1. Why do you want this job?
2. What qualities do you think will be required for this job?
3. What can you contribute?
4. Why do you want to work for this company?
5. What do you know about this company?
6. What interests you about our product (or service)?
7. What can we (the new company) offer that your previous company cannot offer?
8. You have not done this sort of job before. How will you cope/succeed?
9. Why should we employ you?
10. How long do you think it would be before you were making a significant contribution to the team/company?
11. How ambitious are you?
12. Would you compete for my job?
13. What do you like and dislike about the job we are discussing?
14. What are you looking for in a new job?
15. What would you like to avoid in your next job?
16. Are you too old for this job? [Shouldn't be asked in countries with age discrimination legislation.]
17. Are you too young for this job? [Shouldn't be asked in countries with age discrimination legislation.]
18. You may be over qualified for this position?
19. Are you prepared to relocate?
20. Are you willing to travel?
21. What level of salary are you looking for now?

List of interview questions relating to your current / previous job

1. How much does your last job resemble the one you are applying for?
2. What are the differences?
3. What do you think of the last company you worked for?
4. Why did you join your previous company?
5. Did they live up to your expectations?
6. Why are you leaving now?
7. Explain the organizational structure in your last company and how you fitted into it?
8. What did you think of your manager/supervisor?
9. How did you get on with your previous manager/supervisor, coworkers and subordinates?
10. What did you do on a day to day basis?
11. Did you increase sales or profits in your last job?
12. Have you reduced costs at your last company?
13. Did you feel you progressed satisfactorily in your last job?
14. What problems did you encounter in your last job?
15. What annoyed you about your last job?
16. What did you earn in your last job?

Career related interview questions

1. Why did you choose a career in …?
2. Why are you changing careers?
3. What are your career goals?
4. How long have you been looking for a new job?
5. Do you prefer to work in a small, medium or large company?
6. What would your ideal job be?
7. Are you considering any other positions at the moment?
8. If you have changed jobs a lot you may be asked how long you would stay in the new job.
9. Have you ever been fired?
10. How often are you off sick?
11. What will your referees say about you?

List of interview questions relating to you

1. How would you describe yourself?
2. How would others describe you?
3. Do you consider yourself successful?
4. What was your greatest success?
5. How did you achieve it?
6. What has been your biggest failure?
7. How could you improve yourself?
8. Are you a leader?
9. How do you handle criticism?
10. What sort of manager are you?
11. What makes a good manager?
12. Do you work well with others? Or are you a loner?
13. Do you need other people around to stimulate you or are you self-motivated?
14. Are you accepted into a team quickly?
15. Can you act on your own initiative?
16. How do you run a meeting?
17. What motivates you?
18. What management style gets the best results out of you?
19. Do you know how to motivate other people?
20. Are you competitive?
21. Are you aggressive?
22. What do you dislike doing?
23. Do you feel you are ready to take on greater responsibilities?
24. Can you work under pressure?
25. How many hours are you prepared to work?
26. Do you mind working for someone older than yourself? Younger than you? Of the opposite sex?
27. What interests do you have outside work? 

What is Data Warehousing?
A data warehouse is the main repository of an organization’s historical data, its corporate memory. It contains the raw material for management’s decision support system. The critical factor leading to the use of a data warehouse is that a data analyst can perform complex queries and analysis, such as data mining, on the information without slowing down the operational systems (Ref:Wikipedia). Data warehousing collection of data designed to support management decision making. Data warehouses contain a wide variety of data that present a coherent picture of business conditions at a single point in time. It is a repository of integrated information, available for queries and analysis.

What are fundamental stages of Data Warehousing?
Offline Operational Databases – Data warehouses in this initial stage are developed by simply copying the database of an operational system to an off-line server where the processing load of reporting does not impact on the operational system’s performance.
Offline Data Warehouse – Data warehouses in this stage of evolution are updated on a regular time cycle (usually daily, weekly or monthly) from the operational systems and the data is stored in an integrated reporting-oriented data structure.
Real Time Data Warehouse – Data warehouses at this stage are updated on a transaction or event basis, every time an operational system performs a transaction (e.g. an order or a delivery or a booking etc.)
Integrated Data Warehouse – Data warehouses at this stage are used to generate activity or transactions that are passed back into the operational systems for use in the daily activity of the organization.

What is Dimensional Modeling?
Dimensional data model concept involves two types of tables and it is different from the 3rd normal form. This concepts uses Facts table which contains the measurements of the business and Dimension table which contains the context(dimension of calculation) of the measurements.

What is Fact table?
Fact table contains measurements of business processes also fact table contains the foreign keys for the dimension tables. For example, if your business process is “paper production” then “average production of paper by one machine” or “weekly production of paper” would be considered as measurement of business process.

What is Dimension table?
Dimensional table contains textual attributes of measurements stored in the facts tables. Dimensional table is a collection of hierarchies, categories and logic which can be used for user to traverse in hierarchy nodes.

What are the Different methods of loading Dimension tables?
There are two different ways to load data in dimension tables.
Conventional (Slow) :
All the constraints and keys are validated against the data before, it is loaded, this way data integrity is maintained.
Direct (Fast) :
All the constraints and keys are disabled before the data is loaded. Once data is loaded, it is validated against all the constraints and keys. If data is found invalid or dirty it is not included in index and all future processes are skipped on this data.

What is OLTP?
OLTP is abbreviation of On-Line Transaction Processing. This system is an application that modifies data the instance it receives and has a large number of concurrent users.

What is OLAP?
OLAP is abbreviation of Online Analytical Processing. This system is an application that collects, manages, processes and presents multidimensional data for analysis and management purposes.

What is the difference between OLTP and OLAP?
Data Source
OLTP: Operational data is from original data source of the data
OLAP: Consolidation data is from various source.

Process Goal
OLTP: Snapshot of business processes which does fundamental business tasks
OLAP: Multi-dimensional views of business activities of planning and decision making

Queries and Process Scripts
OLTP: Simple quick running queries ran by users.
OLAP: Complex long running queries by system to update the aggregated data.

Database Design
OLTP: Normalized small database. Speed will be not an issue due to smaller database and normalization will not degrade performance. This adopts entity relationship(ER) model and an application-oriented database design.
OLAP: De-normalized large database. Speed is issue due to larger database and de-normalizing will improve performance as there will be lesser tables to scan while performing tasks. This adopts star, snowflake or fact constellation mode of subject-oriented database design.

Describes the foreign key columns in fact table and dimension table?
Foreign keys of dimension tables are primary keys of entity tables.
Foreign keys of facts tables are primary keys of Dimension tables.

What is Data Mining?
Data Mining is the process of analyzing data from different perspectives and summarizing it into useful information.

What is the difference between view and materialized view?
A view takes the output of a query and makes it appear like a virtual table and it can be used in place of tables.
A materialized view provides indirect access to table data by storing the results of a query in a separate schema object.

What is ER Diagram?
Entity Relationship Diagrams are a major data modelling tool and will help organize the data in your project into entities and define the relationships between the entities. This process has proved to enable the analyst to produce a good database structure so that the data can be stored and retrieved in a most efficient manner.
An entity-relationship (ER) diagram is a specialized graphic that illustrates the interrelationships between entities in a database. A type of diagram used in data modeling for relational data bases. These diagrams show the structure of each table and the links between tables.

What is ODS?
ODS is abbreviation of Operational Data Store. A database structure that is a repository for near real-time operational data rather than long term trend data. The ODS may further become the enterprise shared operational database, allowing operational systems that are being re-engineered to use the ODS as there operation databases.

What is ETL?
ETL is abbreviation of extract, transform, and load. ETL is software that enables businesses to consolidate their disparate data while moving it from place to place, and it doesn’t really matter that that data is in different forms or formats. The data can come from any source.ETL is powerful enough to handle such data disparities. First, the extract function reads data from a specified source database and extracts a desired subset of data. Next, the transform function works with the acquired data – using rules orlookup tables, or creating combinations with other data – to convert it to the desired state. Finally, the load function is used to write the resulting data to a target database.

What is VLDB?
VLDB is abbreviation of Very Large DataBase. A one terabyte database would normally be considered to be a VLDB. Typically, these are decision support systems or transaction processing applications serving large numbers of users.

Is OLTP database is design optimal for Data Warehouse?
No. OLTP database tables are normalized and it will add additional time to queries to return results. Additionally OLTP database is smaller and it does not contain longer period (many years) data, which needs to be analyzed. A OLTP system is basically ER model and not Dimensional Model. If a complex query is executed on a OLTP system, it may cause a heavy overhead on the OLTP server that will affect the normal business processes.

If de-normalized is improves data warehouse processes, why fact table is in normal form?
Foreign keys of facts tables are primary keys of Dimension tables. It is clear that fact table contains columns which are primary key to other table that itself make normal form table.

What are lookup tables?
A lookup table is the table placed on the target table based upon the primary key of the target, it just updates the table by allowing only modified (new or updated) records based on thelookup condition.

What are Aggregate tables?
Aggregate table contains the summary of existing warehouse data which is grouped to certain levels of dimensions. It is always easy to retrieve data from aggregated tables than visiting original table which has million records. Aggregate tables reduces the load in the database server and increases the performance of the query and can retrieve the result quickly.

What is real time data-warehousing?
Data warehousing captures business activity data. Real-time data warehousing captures business activity data as it occurs. As soon as the business activity is complete and there is data about it, the completed activity data flows into the data warehouse and becomes available instantly.

What are conformed dimensions?
Conformed dimensions mean the exact same thing with every possible fact table to which they are joined. They are common to the cubes.

What is conformed fact?
Conformed dimensions are the dimensions which can be used across multiple Data Marts in combination with multiple facts tables accordingly.

How do you load the time dimension?
Time dimensions are usually loaded by a program that loops through all possible dates that may appear in the data. 100 years may be represented in a time dimension, with one row per day.

What is a level of Granularity of a fact table?
Level of granularity means level of detail that you put into the fact table in a data warehouse. Level of granularity would mean what detail are you willing to put for each transactional fact.

What are non-additive facts?
Non-additive facts are facts that cannot be summed up for any of the dimensions present in the fact table. However they are not considered as useless. If there is changes in dimensions the same facts can be useful.

What is factless facts table?
A fact table which does not contain numeric fact columns it is called factless facts table.

What are slowly changing dimensions (SCD)?
SCD is abbreviation of Slowly changing dimensions. SCD applies to cases where the attribute for a record varies over time.
There are three different types of SCD.
1) SCD1 : The new record replaces the original record. Only one record exist in database – current data.
2) SCD2 : A new record is added into the customer dimension table. Two records exist in database – current data and previous history data.
3) SCD3 : The original data is modified to include new data. One record exist in database – new information are attached with old information in same row.

What is hybrid slowly changing dimension?
Hybrid SCDs are combination of both SCD 1 and SCD 2. It may happen that in a table, some columns are important and we need to track changes for them i.e capture the historical data for them whereas in some columns even if the data changes, we don’t care.

What is BUS Schema?
BUS Schema is composed of a master suite of confirmed dimension and standardized definition if facts.

What is a Star Schema?
Star schema is a type of organizing the tables such that we can retrieve the result from the database quickly in the warehouse environment.

What Snow Flake Schema?
Snowflake Schema, each dimension has a primary dimension table, to which one or more additional dimensions can join. The primary dimension table is the only table that can join to the fact table.

Differences between star and snowflake schema?
Star schema – A single fact table with N number of Dimension, all dimensions will be linked directly with a fact table. This schema is de-normalized and results in simple join and less complex query as well as faster results.
Snow schema – Any dimensions with extended dimensions are know as snowflake schema, dimensions maybe interlinked or may have one to many relationship with other tables. This schema is normalized and results in complex join and very complex query as well as slower results.

What is Difference between ER Modeling and Dimensional Modeling?
ER modeling is used for normalizing the OLTP database design. Dimensional modeling is used for de-normalizing the ROLAP/MOLAP design.

What is degenerate dimension table?
If a table contains the values, which are neither dimension nor measures is called degenerate dimensions.

Why is Data Modeling Important?
Data modeling is probably the most labor intensive and time consuming part of the development process. The goal of the data model is to make sure that the all data objects required by the database are completely and accurately represented. Because the data model uses easily understood notations and natural language , it can be reviewed and verified as correct by the end-users.
In computer science, data modeling is the process of creating a data model by applying a data model theory to create a data model instance. A data model theory is a formal data model description. When data modelling, we are structuring and organizing data. These data structures are then typically implemented in a database management system. In addition to defining and organizing the data, data modeling will impose (implicitly or explicitly) constraints or limitations on the data placed within the structure.

Managing large quantities of structured and unstructured data is a primary function of information systems. Data models describe structured data for storage in data management systems such as relational databases. They typically do not describe unstructured data, such as word processing documents, email messages, pictures, digital audio, and video. (Reference : Wikipedia)

What is surrogate key?
Surrogate key is a substitution for the natural primary key. It is just a unique identifier or number for each row that can be used for the primary key to the table. The only requirement for a surrogate primary key is that it is unique for each row in the table. It is useful because the natural primary key can change and this makes updates more difficult.Surrogated keys are always integer or numeric.

What is Data Mart?
A data mart (DM) is a specialized version of a data warehouse (DW). Like data warehouses, data marts contain a snapshot of operational data that helps business people to strategize based on analyses of past trends and experiences. The key difference is that the creation of a data mart is predicated on a specific, predefined need for a certain grouping and configuration of select data. A data mart configuration emphasizes easy access to relevant information (Reference : Wiki). Data Marts are designed to help manager make strategic decisions about their business.

What is the difference between OLAP and data warehouse?
Datawarehouse is the place where the data is stored for analyzing where as OLAP is the process of analyzing the data,managing aggregations, partitioning information into cubes for in depth visualization.

What is a Cube and Linked Cube with reference to data warehouse?
Cubes are logical representation of multidimensional data.The edge of the cube contains dimension members and the body of the cube contains data values. The linking in cube ensures that the data in the cubes remain consistent.

What is junk dimension?
A number of very small dimensions might be lumped together to form a single dimension, a junk dimension – the attributes are not closely related. Grouping of Random flags and text Attributes in a dimension and moving them to a separate sub dimension is known as junk dimension.

What is snapshot with reference to data warehouse?
You can disconnect the report from the catalog to which it is attached by saving the report with a snapshot of the data.

What is active data warehousing?
An active data warehouse provides information that enables decision-makers within an organization to manage customer relationships nimbly, efficiently and proactively.

What is the difference between data warehousing and business intelligence?
Data warehousing deals with all aspects of managing the development, implementation and operation of a data warehouse or data mart including meta data management, data acquisition, data cleansing, data transformation, storage management, data distribution, data archiving, operational reporting, analytical reporting, security management, backup/recovery planning, etc. Business intelligence, on the other hand, is a set of software tools that enable an organization to analyze measurable aspects of their business such as sales performance, profitability, operational efficiency, effectiveness of marketing campaigns, market penetration among certain customer groups, cost trends, anomalies and exceptions, etc. Typically, the term “business intelligence” is used to encompass OLAP, data visualization, data mining and query/reporting tools.

1. What do you personally find the most enjoyable part of working for this company?
2. May I ask why or how you joined this organization? / What brought you here?
3. I would like to know about the work atmosphere here…
4. Would you be able to tell me about this company’s vision/philosophy?
5. How would you evaluate this organization’s strengths and weaknesses?
6. I would like to know a little about my day-to-day responsibilities.
7. Is this an immediate requirement? How soon would you be taking people on board for this position?
8. I would like to know how my skills compare with the other people who have applied for this position.
9. I am really interested in this opportunity and I feel I have the required skills for this position. What would I have to do next?
10. Now that our interview is coming to close, is there anything you would like to know about my ability towards this job?
11. Would you be able to tell me a little about what the company expects from its employees? What are the most important assets and skills for this company?
12. Does the company follow a structured path in promoting the employees? How does it go?
13. If the company finds me good at the job, how would it advance me? What would be the next step in my career growth?
14. If I performed well in the current position, what are the additional likely opportunities for me within this company?
15. Are there any special areas in this company that the top leaders emerge from?/ Are there special areas like say sales or engineering that have more prospects for growth within this company, or do the leaders come from a cross section of different areas?
16. The company has decided to recruit for this position from outside. How does the company choose between recruiting from within or outside?
17. How far does this particular position contribute to the bottom line?
18. What advice would you give to someone selected for this position?
19. What are the current challenges of this position/department within the company?
20. Before I leave, can I have a formal/written description of the position? This would help me to review the activities and evaluate what is expected of me.
21. Is this job likely to lead to other positions in the company? What is the usual route?
22. Would you be able to tell me a little about the people I will be working with?
23. Before I take your leave, let me check my understanding of the position. The designation is …., the responsibilities are …., it is in the ….. department, and I would be reporting to ……. Please correct me if I have got it wrong anywhere.
24. How does this company promote equal opportunity and diversity?
25. Would you be able to tell me who the company regards as its stars? What have been their most important contributions?
26. How do the subordinates address their seniors in this company?
27. Could you tell me about the management style of this company?
28. If you selected me for this position, what assignment would I be starting on?
29. Does this company have a formal mission statement? Am I allowed to see it?
30. What are the most important parameters along which this company evaluates an employee’s contribution?

Some More Usefull Questions with Answers

1. Tell me about yourself?

I am down-to-earth, sweet, smart, creative, industrious, and thorough.

2. How has your experience prepared you for your career?

Coursework:

Aside from the discipline and engineering foundation learning that I have gained from my courses, I think the design projects, reports, and presentations have prepared me most for my career.

Work Experience:

Through internships, I have gained self-esteem, confidence, and problem-solving skills. I also refined my technical writing and learned to prepare professional documents for clients.

Student Organizations:

By working on multiple projects for different student organizations while keeping up my grades, I’ve built time management and efficiency skills. Additionally, I’ve developed leadership, communication, and teamwork abilities.

Life Experience:

In general, life has taught me determination and the importance of maintaining my ethical standards.

3. Describe the ideal job.

Ideally, I would like to work in a fun, warm environment with individuals working independently towards team goals or individual goals. I am not concerned about minor elements, such as dress codes, cubicles, and the level of formality. Most important to me is an atmosphere that fosters attention to quality, honesty, and integrity.

4. What type of supervisor have you found to be the best?

I have been fortunate enough to work under wonderful supervisors who have provided limited supervision, while answering thoughtful questions and guiding learning. In my experience, the best supervisors give positive feedback and tactful criticism.

5. What do you plan to be doing in five years’ time?

Taking the PE exam and serving in supervisory/leadership roles both at work and in professional/community organization(s).

6. What contributions could you make in this organization that would help you to stand out from other applicants?

In previous internships, my industriousness and ability to teach myself have been valuable assets to the company. My self-teaching abilities will minimize overhead costs, and my industriousness at targeting needs without prompting will set me apart from others. Additionally, one thing that has always set me apart from my scientific/engineering peers are my broad interests and strong writing abilities. I am not your typical “left-brained” engineer, and with my broad talents, I am likely to provide diverse viewpoints.

7. What sort of criteria are you using to decide the organization you will work for?

Most importantly, I am looking for a company that values quality, ethics, and teamwork. I would like to work for a company that hires overachievers.

8. What made you choose your major?

My academic interests are broad, so I sought civil engineering to achieve a great balance of mathematics, chemistry, biology, physics, and writing.

9. Have your university and major met your expectations?

The College of Engineering at MSU has exceeded my expectations by providing group activities, career resources, individual attention, and professors with genuine interest in teaching.  My major has met my expectations by about 90%. I would have enjoyed more choices in environmental courses, and would have preferred more calculus-based learning.

10. What made you choose this college?

I chose this college for the following reasons: my budget limited me to in-state schools, I was seeking an area with dog-friendly apartments, the MSU web site impressed me, I saw active student groups, and the people were very friendly.

11. How do you handle stress or pressure?

You could answer this question by saying that stress is an important issue to you. While high levels of stress can be negative, I use stress in a productive way that can allow me to work harder. It is important for me to make sure I have the correct balance of positive stress and negative stress. You could also answer this question by saying you perform better when you are under reasonable levels of stress.

12. What do you find motivates you the most?

This is a question that does not require an answer that is right or wrong. The employer is trying to see how you are motivated. It is also a method they will use to determine if you are compatible for the job. It doesn’t make much sense to put you in a position where you will not be motivated by the work you do. The best way to answer this question is to be honest. Let the interviewer know what motivates you the most. Don’t tell them what they want to hear because you are trying to get the job. While this may help you in the short term, it can hurt you in the long run.

13. Do you prefer to work alone, or do you work better in groups?

This is a question that you will want to answer carefully. If the position you are applying for requires you to work alone, it doesn’t make much sense to answer it by saying you enjoy working in groups. If the position requires you to work in groups, telling the interviewer you like working alone can keep you from being hired. However, the answer you give should be an honest one.

14. Give us an example of a challenging situation you’ve overcome.

This is a request that will require you to know a lot about yourself. If you’ve prepared for the interview beforehand, you should be able to answer this question without any problems. You should reflect on your past work experience. You must quickly be able to think about any challenges you’ve overcome. It doesn’t have to be something that is related to employment. If you were in the military, you could describe a challenge you overcame. If you are a college graduate, you can give an example of an academic challenge you successfully overcame.

15. What do you find interesting about this job?

The answer that you give better be more than just the salary. You should be able to give detailed reasons for why you are interested in being hired for a certain position. Answering this question correctly may require you to do your research on the company. This is something that must be done before the interview starts.

16. Why should we hire you?

This is one of the most difficult questions in the interview process. However, it is a good question, especially if you are competing for a position against people who are equally qualified. To answer this question, describe how your skills can be valuable to the company. Not only will you want to direct the towards your accomplishments, but you will also want to demonstrate your personality and desire. Explain that you are impressed with the history of the company, and you want to play a role in the success of the organization.

17. In what ways can you contribute to our company?

You will want to answer this question by selling yourself. Explain how your skills, personality, and experience can allow you to contribute to the company. This is a question that you may want to prepare for in advance. You will want to answer it with a powerful statement. You don’t want to be uneasy of hesitant. If the employer suspects this, you may lose your chance to be employed with the company.

This feature enables us to execute C# or VB.NET code in the DBMS to take advantage of the .NET functionality. This feature gives more flexibility in writing complex stored procedures, functions, and triggers that can be written in .net compatible language.

2.    What is SSIS?

According to Microsoft SQL Server Integration Services, “(SSIS) is an effective set of tools for both the traditional demands of ETL operations, as well as for the evolving needs of general purpose data integration.” In short, it is the next version of DTS (Data Transformation Services). ETL stands for Extract, Transform and Loading. In short it is a data migration tool that is flexible, fast, and has scalable architecture that enables effective data integration in current business environments.

3.    What is MARS?

In previous versions of SQL Server, applications had to process or cancel all result sets from one batch before it could execute any other batch on that connection. SQL Server 2005 introduces a new connection attribute that allows applications to have more than one pending request per connection, and in particular, to have more than one active default result set per connection. Multiple Active Result Sets (MARS) is the ability to have more than one pending request under a given SQL Server connection. MARS is a programming model enhancement that allows multiple requests to interleave in the server. We need to note that it is not a parallel execution in the server. However, it may benefit us with some performance benefits if used correctly. By default, this feature is not set in SQL Server 2005.

4.    What are the Security Enhancements in SQL Server 2005?

SQL Server 2005 enables administrators to manage permissions at a granular level.

·         In the new SQL Server 2005, we can specify a context under which statements in a module can execute.

·         SQL Server 2005 clustering supports Kerberos authentication against a SQL Server 2005 virtual server.

·         Administrators can specify Microsoft Windows-style policies on standard logins so that a consistent policy is applied across all accounts in the domain.

·         SQL Server 2005 supports encryption capabilities within the database itself, fully integrated with a key management infrastructure. By default, client-server communications are encrypted.

5.    What is new with the Reporting services in SQL server 2005?

SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services is a key component of SQL Server 2005 that provides customers with an enterprise-capable reporting platform. This comprehensive environment is used for authoring, managing, and delivering reports to the entire organization. SQL Server 2005 reporting services have some major changes when compared with the previous version.

·         Changes to the core functionality of the Reporting services in the design of the report, processing, and interactivity

·         Better Integration with other components – Enhanced integration with other components within SQL Server 2005 like SSIS, SSAS and SQL Server Management studio

·         Report Builder – A new reporting tool that enables business users to create their own reports

6.    What is OLAP?

Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) allows us to access aggregated and organized data from business data sources, such as data warehouses, in a multidimensional structure called a cube. The arrangement of data into cubes avoids a limitation of relational databases which are not well suited for near instantaneous analysis of large amounts of data. OLAP cubes can be thought of as extensions to the two-dimensional array of a spreadsheet.

7.    What is Data Mining?

According to MSDN Data, mining is “the process of extracting valid, authentic, and actionable information from large databases.” Microsoft data mining tools are different from traditional data mining applications in significant ways. Data Mining is a platform for developing intelligent applications, not a stand-alone application. You can build custom applications that are intelligent because the data mining models are easily accessible to the outside world. Further, the model is extensible so that third parties can add custom algorithms to support particular mining needs.

8.    What is new with the Analysis Services (SSAS) in SQL Server 2005?

SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services (SSAS) delivers online analytical processing (OLAP) and data mining functionality through a combination of server and client technologies, further reinforced through the use of a specialized development and management environment coupled with a well-defined object model for designing, creating, deploying, and maintaining business intelligence applications. The server component of Analysis Services is implemented as a Microsoft Windows service. Clients communicate with Analysis Services using the public standard XML for Analysis (XMLA), a SOAP-based protocol. Let us see the enhancements of made to SSAS.

·         Supports up to 16 instances of Analysis Services Service.

·         As discussed above, the Analysis Services service fully implements the XML for Analysis (XMLA) 1.1 specification. All communication with an instance of Analysis Services is handled through XMLA commands in SOAP messages.

·         Uses the Proactive caching.

9.    What is Information Schema in SQL Sever 2005?

Information Schema is the part of the SQL- 92 standard which exposes the metadata of the database. In SQL server, a set of views are created in each of the databases which exposes the metadata of the database. The information schema is kept in a separate schema – information schema – which exists in all databases, but which is not included in the search path by default. For more information regarding Information schema please read this article.

10. What is Full Text Search? How does it get implemented in SQL server 2005?

Full-text search allows fast and flexible indexing for keyword-based query of text data stored in a Microsoft SQL Server database. In contrast to the LIKE predicate which only works on character patterns, full-text queries perform linguistic searches against this data, by operating on words and phrases based on rules of a particular language.

11. What is integration of Microsoft Office System mean?

The integration with Microsoft Office system means the following.

·         Table Analysis Tools for Excel: Provides an easy-to-use add-in that leverages SQL Server 2005 Data Mining behind the scenes to perform powerful end user analysis on spreadsheet data.

·         Data Mining Client for Excel: Offers a full data mining model development lifecycle directly within Excel 2007.

·         Data Mining Templates for Visio: Enables powerful rendering and sharing of mining models as annotatable Visio 2007 drawings.

12. What is the support of Web Services in SQL Server 2005?

With this feature the database engine can be directly exposed as a web service without a middle tier or even an IIS. This will enable the user to directly call a stored procedure by calling a web method. This feature is designed with well-known standards such as SOAP 1.2, WSDL 1.1, and HTTP. With this new feature we can now connect to SQL Server not only with TDS- Tabular data stream (a binary protocol for connecting to SQL Server 2005) but also over SOAP/ HTTP.

13. What is OLTP?

Online Transaction Processing (OLTP) relational databases are optimal for managing changing data. When several users are performing transactions at the same time, OLTP databases are designed to let transactional applications write only the data needed to handle a single transaction as quickly as possible.

14. What is Snapshot in SQL Server 2005?

A database snapshot is a read-only, static view of a database, the source database. Each database snapshot is transaction-consistent with the source database as it existed at the time of the snapshot’s creation.

15. What is snapshot isolation in SQL Server 2005?

SQL Server 2005 introduces a new “snapshot” isolation level that is intended to enhance concurrency for online transaction processing (OLTP) applications. In prior versions of SQL Server, concurrency was based solely on locking, which can cause blocking and deadlocking problems for some applications. Snapshot isolation depends on enhancements to row versioning and is intended to improve performance by avoiding reader-writer blocking scenarios.

16. What is Database Partitioning in SQL Server 2005?

SQL Server 2005 provides a new capability for the partitioning of tables across file groups in a database. Partitioning a database improves performance and simplifies maintenance. By splitting a large table into smaller, individual tables, queries accessing only a fraction of the data can run faster because there is less data to scan.

17. What is SQL Server Agent?

SQL Server Agent is a Microsoft Windows service that executes scheduled administrative tasks called jobs. SQL Server Agent uses SQL Server to store job information. Jobs contain one or more job steps. We generally schedule the backups on the production databases using the SQL server agent. In SQL Server 2005 we have roles created for using SQL Server agents.

·         SQLAgentUserRole

·         SQLAgentReaderRole

·         SQLAgentOperatorRole

SQL Server Agent for SQL Server 2005 provides a more robust security design than earlier versions of SQL Server. This improved design gives system administrators the flexibility they need to manage their Agent service.

18. What is Replication? What is the need to have the replication? What are the enhancements made to SQL Server 2005 related to the replication?

“Replication is a set of technologies for copying and distributing data and database objects from one database to another and then synchronizing between databases to maintain consistency.” In short, replication is all about having multiple copies of the same database. We need replication when we need to distribute data to and from different locations. Generally we have a master copy of data. There will be multiple slaves (Clients) located at various locations which need to be replicated. We use replication for a variety of reasons. Load balancing is sharing the data among a number of servers and distributing the query load. Offline processing is one of the main reasons. In this scenario we need to modify the data on the database that is not connected to the network. The last reason may be to have a back-up to the database in case of failure to the existing database. Let us see the enhancements of SQL server 2005 database related to replication.

·         Database Mirroring – Database Mirroring is moving the transactions of database from one SQL Server database to another SQL server database on a different SQL Server.

·         Replication Management topology (RMO) – RMO is a new construct in SQL Server 2005. It is a .NET Framework library that provides a set of common language runtime classes for configuring, managing, and scripting replication, and for synchronizing Subscribers.

19. What are Business Logic Handlers?

Business logic handlers are written in managed code and allow us to execute custom business logic during the merge synchronization. We can invoke the business logic handler in case of non-conflicting data changes. Business logic handler can perform one of the following three actions.

·         Reject Data

·         Accept Data

·         Apply Custom Data

20. What are different variants of SQL Server 2005?

There are different variants of SQL Server 2005 commercially available.

·         Express – Free and only for one user

·         Enterprise – 5 users apart from server

·         Workgroup – 10 users apart from server

·         Standard – 25 users apart from server

21. What are Various Service packs available for SQL Server 2005?

As of now there are two service packs available for the SQL Server 2005.

·         Service Pack 1 – Has major changes or enhancements to SQL Server 2005 in Analysis Services, Data Programmability, SSIS, and reporting services.

·         Service Pack 2 – Unlike Service Pack 2, this service pack enables SQL Server 2005 customers to take advantage of the enhancements within Windows Vista and the 2007 Office system.

22. What are the New Data types introduced in SQL Server 2005?

SQL Server 2005 has added some new data types to its existing data types.

XML Data type

·         VARCHAR (MAX)

·         NVARCHAR (MAX)

·         VARBINARY (MAX)

As we can see, the new term MAX has been introduced in SQL Server 2005. This new specifier expands the storage capabilities of the varchar, nvarchar, and varbinary data types. Varchar(max), nvarchar(max), and varbinary(max) are collectively called large-value data types.

23. Does SQL Server 2005 support SMTP?

SQL Server 2005 now supports sending E-mail from the database. It is called as database mail and it uses DatabaseMail90.exe. Gone are the days when we were using a third party component for this. Receiving an e-mail was not supported in the previous versions of SQL Server.

24. What is SQL Management Object is SQL Server 2005?

These are collection of objects that are made for programming all aspects of managing Microsoft SQL Server 2005. SMO is a .NET based object model. It comes with SQL Server 2005 as a .Net assembly named Microsoft.SqlServer.Smo.dll. We can use these objects for connecting to a database, calling methods of the database that returns a table, using transactions, transferring data, scheduling administrative tasks, etc. The best part about SMO is that most of it can also be used with SQL server 2000.

25. What is SQL Service Broker in SQL Server 2005?

SQL Service broker is a new technology introduced in SQL Server 2005 for building database-intensive distributed applications. Basically, service broker has been built for developing applications that consist of individual components which are loosely coupled. Service broker supports asynchronous yet reliable messages that are passed between the components. These messages are called conversations.

Ans. Do serialization of convert the object to string
10.Explain how Viewstate is being formed and how it’s stored on client.
Ans.The type of ViewState is System.Web.UI.StateBag, which is a dictionary that stores name/value pairs. ViewState is persisted to a string variable by the ASP.NET page framework and sent to the client and back as a hidden variable. Upon postback, the page framework parses the input string from the hidden variable and populates the ViewState property of each control. If a control uses ViewState for property data instead of a private field, that property automatically will be persisted across round trips to the client. (If a property is not persisted in ViewState, it is good practice to return its default value on postback.)
11. Where is ViewState information stored ?
Ans. ViewState information is stored in hidden fields.
12. What are benefits and Limitation of using Hidden fields ?
Ans. The benefits of using hidden fields to store client-side state include:
• No server resources are required. The hidden field is stored and read directly from the page.
• Almost all browsers and client devices support forms with hidden fields.
• Hidden fields are simple to implement.
• Hidden fields are good for caching data in Web farm configurations because the data is cached on the client.
The limitations of using hidden fields are:
• The hidden field can be tampered with. The information in this field can be seen if the page output source is viewed directly, creating a potential security issue.
• The hidden field does not support rich structures; it offers only a single value field in which to place information. To store multiple values, you must implement delimited strings and write the code required to parse those strings.
• Page performance decreases when you store large values because hidden fields are stored in the page.
13.How can you use Hidden frames to cache client data ?
Ans. You can use hidden frames to cache data on the client, avoiding the roundtrips to the server that are inherent in hidden field and view state implementations. You create a hidden frame in your page that loads a Web page into the frame containing your data. The pages in your application can access this data using client-side scripting. This implementation does not require any server resources because the data fields in the hidden frame are stored and read directly from the page.
14.What are benefits and Limitation of using Hidden frames?
Ans. The benefits of using hidden frames to store client-side state include:
• The ability to cache more than one data field.
• The avoidance of roundtrips of data during postbacks.
• The ability to cache and access data items stored in different hidden forms.
• The ability to access JScript® variable values stored in different frames if they come from the same site.
The limitations of using hidden frames are:
• Functionality of hidden frames is not supported by all browsers. Do not rely on hidden frames to provide data for the essential functionality of your pages.
• The hidden frame can be tampered with, and the information in the page can be seen if the page output source is viewed directly, creating a potential security threat.
• There is no limit to the number of frames (embedded or not) that you can hide. In frames that bring data from the database and that contain several Java applets or images, a large number of frames can negatively affect performance of the first page load.
15.What is Global.asax used for?
Ans.The Global.asax is used to implement application and session level events.
16. What are major events in GLOBAL.ASAX file ?
Ans. The Global.asax file, which is derived from the HttpApplication class, maintains a pool of HttpApplication objects, and assigns them to applications as needed. The Global.asax file contains the following events:
• Application_Init: Fired when an application initializes or is first called. It’s invoked for all HttpApplication object instances.
• Application_Disposed: Fired just before an application is destroyed. This is the ideal location for cleaning up previously used resources.
• Application_Error: Fired when an unhandled exception is encountered within the application.
• Application_Start: Fired when the first instance of the HttpApplication class is created. It allows you to create objects that are accessible by all HttpApplication instances.
• Application_End: Fired when the last instance of an HttpApplication class is destroyed. It’s fired only once during an application’s lifetime.
• Application_BeginRequest: Fired when an application request is received. It’s the first event fired for a request, which is often a page request (URL) that a user enters.
• Application_EndRequest: The last event fired for an application request.
• Application_PreRequestHandlerExecute: Fired before the ASP.NET page framework begins executing an event handler like a page or Web service.
• Application_PostRequestHandlerExecute: Fired when the ASP.NET page framework is finished executing an event handler.
• Applcation_PreSendRequestHeaders: Fired before the ASP.NET page framework sends HTTP headers to a requesting client (browser).
• Application_PreSendContent: Fired before the ASP.NET page framework sends content to a requesting client (browser).
• Application_AcquireRequestState: Fired when the ASP.NET page framework gets the current state (Session state) related to the current request.
• Application_ReleaseRequestState: Fired when the ASP.NET page framework completes execution of all event handlers. This results in all state modules to save their current state data.
• Application_ResolveRequestCache: Fired when the ASP.NET page framework completes an authorization request. It allows caching modules to serve the request from the cache, thus bypassing handler execution.
• Application_UpdateRequestCache: Fired when the ASP.NET page framework completes handler execution to allow caching modules to store responses to be used to handle subsequent requests.
• Application_AuthenticateRequest: Fired when the security module has established the current user’s identity as valid. At this point, the user’s credentials have been validated.
• Application_AuthorizeRequest: Fired when the security module has verified that a user can access resources.
• Session_Start: Fired when a new user visits the application Web site.
• Session_End: Fired when a user’s session times out, ends, or they leave the application Web site.
17.How do you validate the controls in ASP.NET page?
Ans. Using the validation controls that are meant for this.
18. Which control is used to make sure the values in two different controls are matched?
Ans. CompareValidator control.
19.Name two properties common in every validation control.
Ans.ControlToValidate property and Text property.

20. Can the validation be done in the server side? Or this can be done only in the Client side?
Ans. Client side is done by default. Server side validation is also possible. We can switch off the client side and server side can be done.

21. How to manage pagination in a page?
Ans. Using pagination option in DataGrid control. We have to set the number of records for a page, then it takes care of pagination by itself.

22. Which are various modes of storing ASP.NET session?
Ans. ASP.Net Session State supports three modes. inproc, sqlserver, and stateserver.
• InProc – session kept as live objects in web server (aspnet_wp.exe). Use “cookieless” configuration in web.config to “munge” the sessionId onto the URL (solves cookie/domain/path RFC problems too!)
• StateServer – session serialized and stored in memory in a separate process (aspnet_state.exe). State Server can run on another machine
• SQLServer – session serialized and stored in SQL server

23. Is Session_End event supported in all session modes ?
Ans. Session_End event only supported in inproc mode when the session data is stored in the asp.net worker process.
24. What are the precautions you will take in order that StateServer Mode work properly ?
Ans. Following are the things to remember so that StateServer Mode works properly :-
• StateServer mode session data is stored in a different process so you must
ensure that your objects are serializable.
• elements in Web.config should be indentical across all
servers.So this ensures that encryption format is same across all computers.
• IIS metabase (\LM\W3SVC\2) must be identical across all servers in that
farm.
25. What are the precautions you will take in order that SQLSERVERMode work properly ?
Ans.Following are the things to remember so that SQLSERVER Mode works properly.
• SQLSERVER mode session data is stored in a different process so you must ensure that your objects are serializable.
• IIS metabase (\LM\W3SVC\2) must be indentical across all servers in that farm.
• By default Session objects are stored in “Tempdb” , you can configure it store outside “TempDB” by running microsoft provided SQL script.
Note :- “TempDB” database is re-created after SQL SERVER computer reboot.If you want to maintain session state with every reboot best is to run SQL Script and store session objects outside “TempDB” database.

26. Where do you specify session state mode in ASP.NET ?
Ans. stateConnectionString=”tcpip=192.168.1.1:42424″
sqlConnectionString=”data source=192.168.1.1; Integrated
Security=SSPI”
cookieless=”false”
timeout=”20″
>
Above is sample session state mode specified for SQL SERVER.
27. What are the other ways you can maintain state ?
Ans.Other than session variables you can use the following technique to store state :
• Hidden fields
• View state
• Hidden frames
• Cookies
• Query strings
28. What are benefits and Limitation of using Cookies?
Ans.Following are benefits of using cookies for state management :-
• No server resources are required as they are stored in client.
• They are light weight and simple to use
Following are limitation of using cookies :-
• Most browsers place a 4096-byte limit on the size of a cookie,although support
for 8192-byte cookies is becoming more common in the new browser and
client-device versions available today.
• Some users disable their browser or client device’s ability to receive cookies,
thereby limiting the use of cookies.
• Cookies can be tampered and thus creating a security hole.
• Cookies can expire thus leading to inconsistency.
Below is sample code of implementing cookies
Request.Cookies.Add(New HttpCookie(“name”, “user1”))

29. What is Query String and What are benefits and Limitation of using Query Strings?
Ans.A query string is information sent to the server appended to the end of a page URL.
Following are the benefits of using query string for state management:-
• No server resources are required. The query string is contained in the HTTP request for a specific URL.
• All browsers support query strings.
Following are limitations of query string :-
• Query string data is directly visible to user thus leading to security problems.-
• Most browsers and client devices impose a 255-character limit on URL length.
Below is a sample “Login” query string passed in URL http://www.querystring.com/
login.asp?login=testing.This querystring data can then be requested later by using
Request.QueryString(“login”).

30. What is application object ?
Ans.Application object can used in situation where we want data to be shared across users globally.
31.What’s the difference between Cache object and application object?
Ans.The main difference between the Cache and Application objects is that the Cache object provides cache-specific features, such as dependencies and expiration policies.
32.How can get access to cache object ?
Ans.The Cache object is defined in the System.Web.Caching namespace. You can get a reference to the Cache object by using the Cache property of the HttpContext class in the System.Web namespace or by using the Cache property of the Page object.
33.What are dependencies in cache and types of dependencies ?
Ans.When you add an item to the cache, you can define dependency relationships that can force that item to be removed from the cache under specific activities of dependencies.Example if the cache object is dependent on file and when the file data changes you want the cache object to be update.Following are the supported dependency.
• File dependency :- Allows you to invalidate a specific cache item when a disk based file or files change.
• Time-based expiration :- Allows you to invalidate a specific cache item depending on predefined time.
• Key dependency :-Allows you to invalidate a specific cache item depending when another cached item changes.
34.Can you show a simple code showing file dependency in cache ?
Ans.Partial Class Default_aspx
Public Sub displayAnnouncement()
Dim announcement As String
If Cache(“announcement”) Is Nothing Then
Dim file As New _
System.IO.StreamReader _
(Server.MapPath(“announcement.txt”))
announcement = file.ReadToEnd
file.Close()
Dim depends As New _
System.Web.Caching.CacheDependency _
(Server.MapPath(“announcement.txt”))
Cache.Insert(“announcement”, announcement, depends)
End If
Response.Write(CType(Cache(“announcement”), String))
End Sub
Private Sub Page_Init(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As
System.EventArgs) Handles Me.Init
displayAnnouncement()
End Sub
End Class
Note :- Above source code can be obtained from CD in “CacheSample”
folder.”Announcement.txt” is in the same folder which you can play around to see the results.
Above given method displayAnnouncement() displays banner text from Announcement.txt file which is lying in application path of the web directory.Above method first checks is the Cache object nothing , if the cache object is nothing then it moves further to load the cache data from the file.Whenever the file data changes the cache object is removed and set to nothing.
35.What is Cache Callback in Cache ?
Ans.Cache object is dependent on its dependencies example file based , time based etc.Cache items remove the object when cache dependencies change.ASP.NET provides capability to execute a callback method when that item is removed from cache.

36. What is scavenging ?
Ans.When server running your ASP.NET application runs low on memory resources , items are removed from cache depending on cache item priority.cache item priority is set when you add item to cache.BY setting the cache item priority controls which items scavenging is removed first.
37. What are different types of caching using cache object of ASP.NET?
Ans.You can use two types of output caching to cache information that is to be transmitted to and displayed in a Web browser:
• Page Output Caching
Page output caching adds the response of page to cache object.Later when page is requested page is displayed from cache rather than creating the page object and displaying it.Page output caching is good if the site is fairly static.
• Page Fragment Caching
If parts of the page are changing, you can wrap the static sections as user controls and cache the user controls using pagefragment caching.
38. How can you cache different version of same page using ASP.NET
cache object ?
Ans.Output cache functionality is achieved by using “OutputCache” attribute on ASP.NET page header.Below is the syntax

• VaryByParam :- Caches different version depending on input parameters send through HTTP POST/GET.
• VaryByHeader:- Caches different version depending on the contents of the page header.
• VaryByCustom:-Lets you customize the way the cache handles page variations by declaring the attribute and overriding the GetVaryByCustomString handler.
• VaryByControl:-Caches different versions of a user control based on the value of properties of ASP objects in the control.
39. How will implement Page Fragment Caching ?
Ans.Page fragment caching involves the caching of a fragment of the page, rather than the entire page. When portions of the page need to be dynamically created for each user request this is best method as compared to page caching.You can wrap Web Forms user control and cache the control so that these portions of the page don’t need to be recreated
each time.
40. What’s the sequence in which ASP.NET events are processed?
Ans.
1. Initialize: Initialize settings needed during the lifetime of the incoming Web request.
2. Load view state: At the end of this phase, the ViewState property of a control is automatically populated
3. Process postback data: Process incoming form data and update properties accordingly.
4. Load: Perform actions common to all requests, such as setting up a database query. At this point, server controls in the tree are created and initialized, the state is restored, and form controls reflect client-side data.
5. Send postback change notifications: Raise change events in response to state changes between the current and previous postbacks.
6. Handle postback events: Handle the client-side event that caused the postback and raise appropriate events on the server.
7. Prerender: Perform any updates before the output is rendered. Any changes made to the state of the control in the prerender phase can be saved, while changes made in the rendering phase are lost.
8. Save state: The ViewState property of a control is automatically persisted to a string object after this stage. This string object is sent to the client and back as a hidden variable. For improving efficiency, a control can override the SaveViewState method to modify the ViewState property.
9. Render: Generate output to be rendered to the client.
10. Dispose: Perform any final cleanup before the control is torn down. References to expensive resources such as database connections must be released in this phase.
11. Unload: Perform any final cleanup before the control is torn down. Control authors generally perform cleanup in Dispose and do not handle this event.
Initialization, Page Load, PreRendor, Page unload

41. What is event bubbling ?

Ans. Event Bubbling is nothing but events raised by child controls is handled by the parent control. Example: Suppose consider datagrid as parent control in which there are several child controls.There can be a column of link buttons right.Each link button has click event.Instead of writing event routine for each link button write one routine for parent which will handlde the click events of the child link button events.Parent can know which child actaully triggered the event.That thru arguments passed to event routine.

42. How do we assign page specific attributes ?

Ans. @Page directive defines page-specific attributes used in ASP.NET pages(.aspx). @Page directives allow you to set attributes that directly affect your ASP.NET pages that end with the .aspx extension. The following is a small example of what an @Page directive looks like:<%@ page language=”c#” buffer=”true” Explicit=”true” runat=”server” %>

43. What’s the use of @ Register directives ?

Ans. @ Register Creates an association between a tag prefix and a custom control, which provides developers with a concise way to refer to custom controls in an ASP.NET application file (including Web pages, user controls, and master pages).

44. What’s the use of SmartNavigation property ?

Ans. A SmartNavigation is a property of the Page class in System.Web.UI. When a request comes in to Internet Explorer 5.5 or higher and SmartNavigation is turned on (set to true), the following actions are performed: The flash caused by navigation is eliminated The scroll position is persisted when moving from page to page Element focus is persisted between navigations Only the last page state in the browser’s history is retained However, according to the Microsoft^® .NET Framework Class Library documentation, smart navigation is best used only with ASP.NET pages that require frequent postbacks but have visual content that does not change dramatically on return.In most circumstances, you should not set this property in code. Set the SmartNavigation attribute to true in the @ Page directive in the .aspx file. When the page is requested, the dynamically generated class sets this property for you. Smart navigation is a feature that you must test in your particular scenarios to be sure the proper behavior is exhibited.

45. What is AppSetting Section in “Web.Config” file ?

Ans. The <appSettings> element of a web.config file is a place to store connection strings, server names, file paths, and other miscellaneous settings needed by an application to perform work. The items inside appSettings are items that need to be configurable depending upon the environment, for instance, any database connection strings will change as you move your application from a testing and staging server into production.

46What’s the use of @ OutputCache directive in ASP.NET?

Ans.@ OutputCacheDeclaratively controls the output caching policies of an ASP.NET page or a user control contained in a page.

47.How can we create custom controls in ASP.NET?

Ans. custom controls can be created in either of the following 3 methods.

1. Creating as a composite control : This method uses and combines the existing controls to give a custom functionality which can be used across different projects by adding to the control library. This can provide for event bubbling from child controls to the Parent container, custom event handling and properties. The CreateChildControls function of the Control class should be overridden for creating this custom control. This can also support design time rendering of the control.
2. Deriving from an existing control : This method of creating a custom control derives from an existing ASP .Net control and customizing the properties that we need. This also can support custom event handling, properties etc.,
3. Creating a control from Scratch : This method is the one which needs maximum programming. This method needs even the HTML code for the custom controls to be written by the programmer. This may also need one to implement the IPostBackDataHandler and IPostBackEventHandler interfaces. A detailed explanation with example for this is available at Rendering Custom Controls Sample in MSDN.

48. How many types of validation controls are provided by ASP.NET ?

Ans.RequiredField Validator Control,Range Validator Control, RegularExpression Validator Control,Custom Validator Control and Validation Summary Control are provided by ASP.NET.

49. Can you explain what is “AutoPostBack” feature in ASP.NET ?

Ans. AutoPostBack is built into the form-based server controls, and when enabled, automatically posts the page back to the server whenever the value of the control in question is changed.

50. How can you enable automatic paging in DataGrid ?

Ans. Using the Built-In Paging Controls

To use default paging, you set properties to enable paging, set the page size, and specify the style of the paging controls. Paging controls are LinkButton controls. You can choose from these types: Next and previous buttons. The button captions can be any text you want. Page numbers, which allow users to jump to a specific page. You can specify how many numbers are displayed; if there are more pages, an ellipsis ( … ) is displayed next to the numbers. You must also create an event-handling method that responds when users click a navigation control.

To use the built-in paging controlsSet the control’s AllowPaging property to true. Set the PageSize property to the number of items to display per page.

To set the appearance of the paging buttons, include a <PagerStyle> element into the page as a child of the DataGrid control. For syntax, see DataGrid Control Syntax. Create a handler for the grid’s PageIndexChanged event to respond to a paging request. The DataGridPageChangedEventsArgs enumeration contains the NewPageIndex property, which is the page the user would like to browse to. Set the grid’s CurrentPageIndex property to e.NewPageIndex, then rebind the data.

51. What’s the difference between “Web.config” and “Machine.Config” ?

Ans. machine.config is where u define all the machine specific settings.. common for all the web application..
web.config is where u define all the setings for that perticular web application.. it override the machine.config settings for application.

52. What’s the difference between login controls and Forms authentication?
Ans.Login controls are an easy way to implement Forms authentication without having to write any code. For example, the Login control performs the same functions you would normally perform when using the FormsAuthentication class—prompt for user credentials, validate them, and issue the authentication ticket—but with all the functionality wrapped in a control that you can just drag from the Toolbox in Visual Studio. Under the covers, the login control uses the FormsAuthentication class (for example, to issue the authentication ticket) and ASP.NET membership (to validate the user credentials). Naturally, you can still use Forms authentication yourself, and applications you have that currently use it will continue to run.

53. What’s difference between Authentication and authorization?

Ans. Authentication is the process of identifying and verifying who the client accessing the server is.
For example, if you use

• Windows authentication and are browsing an ASP.NET page from server — ASP.NET/IIS would automatically use NTLM to authenticate you as SYNCFUSION\user1 (for example).
• Forms based authentication, then you would use an html based forms page to enter username/password — which would then check a database and authenticate you against the username/password in the database.

Authorization is the process of determining whether an authenticated user has access to run a particular page within an ASP.NET web application. Specifically, as an application author decide to grant or deny the authenticated user “SYNCFUSION\user1″ access to the admin.aspx page. This could be done either by explictly granting/denying rights based on the username — or use role based mappings to map authenticated users into roles.

54. What are the various ways of authentication techniques in ASP.NET?

Ans. ASP.NET provides three ways to authenticate a user:

• Windows authentication,
• Forms authentication, and
• Passport authentication

55. What’s difference between Datagrid , Datalist and repeater ?

Ans. Datagrid is most restrictive as regards to customization followed by DataList and finally Repeater is the most customizable.Datagrid has built in paging, sorting and editing capabilities which are not there with the other two controls. So if you want users to sort / page / edit data, datagrid is the natural choice.DataList and repeater have better performance than datagrid. So if performance is a major concern, for example, a site with large number of concurrent visitors, then you could think of datalist or repeater.Repeater is the most customizable. It allows you to create structures like nested lists, for example.A datagrid row displays one record from the data source, while a datalist row can display more than one records (set by RepeatColumns property)Datagrid and Datalist are derived from WebControl while Repeater is not, and so does not have the stylistic properties of web controls.All are similar in that they have a datasource property and ItemCreated, ItemDataBound and ItemCommand events.

56. What is Tracing in ASP.NET ?

Ans. ASP.NET introduces new functionality that allows you to write debug statements, directly in your code, without having to remove them from your application when it is deployed to production servers. Called tracing, this feature allows you to write variables or structures in a page, assert whether a condition is met, or simply trace through the execution path of your page or application.

57. How do we enable tracing ?

Ans.Instead of enabling tracing for individual pages, you can enable it for your entire application. In that case, every page in your application displays trace information. Application tracing is useful when you are developing an application because you can easily enable it and disable it without editing individual pages. When your application is complete, you can turn off tracing for all pages at once.When you enable tracing for an application, ASP.NET collects trace information for each request to the application, up to the maximum number of requests you specify. The default number of requests is 10. You can view trace information with the trace viewer.By default, when the trace viewer reaches its request limit, the application stops storing trace requests. However, you can configure application-level tracing to always store the most recent tracing data, discarding the oldest data when the maximum number of requests is reached.

To Enable Tracing for an application

1.Open your Web site’s Web.config file. If no Web.config file exists, create a new file in the root folder and copy the following into it:

<?xml version=”1.0″?>

<configuration xmlns=”http://schemas.microsoft.com/.NetConfiguration/v2.0″>

<system.web>

</system.web>

</configuration>

2.Add a trace element as a child of the system.web element.

3.In the trace element, set the enabled attribute to true.

4.If you want trace information to appear at the end of the page that it is associated with, set the trace element’s pageOutput attribute to true. If you want tracing information to be displayed only in the trace viewer, set the pageOutput attribute to false.For example, the following application trace configuration collects trace information for up to 40 requests and allows browsers on computers other than the server of origin to display the trace viewer. Trace information is not displayed in individual pages.

<configuration>

<system.web>

<trace enabled=”true” pageOutput=”false” requestLimit=”40″ localOnly=”false”/>

</system.web>

</configuration>

58. What exactly happens when ASPX page is requested from Browser?

Ans. At its core, the ASP.NET execution engine compiles the page into a class, which derives from the code behind class (which in turn derives directly or indirectly from the Page class). Then it injects the newly created class into the execution environment, instantiates it, and executes it. ASP.NET, on the other hand, can accept code in any language that is compatible with the .NET framework, because it’s compiled down natively just like other code.

59.How can we kill a user session ?

Ans.The Abandon method destroys all the objects stored in a Session object and releases their resources.
If you do not call the Abandon method explicitly, the server destroys these objects when the session times out.Syntax: Session.Abandon.
60.How do I send email message from ASP.NET?

Ans. The .NET Framework supplies a SMTP class that enables you to send a simple e-mail message. If you have to send an e-mail with added functionalities, you have to make use of the MailMessage class. With the help of this class, you can insert attachments, set priorities, and much more, very easily. You can also send HTML e-mail using this class.61. What are different IIS isolation levels?Ans. There are 3 IIS isolation levels.

• Low (IIS Process): ASP pages run in INetInfo.Exe, the main IIS process, therefore they are executed in-process. This is the fastest setting, and is the default under IIS4. The problem is that if ASP crashes, IIS crashes as well and must be restarted (IIS5 has a reliable restart feature that automatically restarts a server when a fatal error occurs).
• Medium (Pooled): In this case ASP runs in a different process, which makes this setting more reliable: if ASP crashes IIS won’t. All the ASP applications at the Medium isolation level share the same process, so you can have a web site running with just two processes (IIS and ASP process). IIS5 is the first Internet Information Server version that supports this setting, which is also the default setting when you create an IIS5 application. Note that an ASP application that runs at this level is run under COM+, so it’s hosted in DLLHOST.EXE (and you can see this executable in the Task Manager).
• High (Isolated): Each ASP application runs out-process in its own process space, therefore if an ASP application crashes, neither IIS nor any other ASP application will be affected. The downside is that you consume more memory and resources if the server hosts many ASP applications. Both IIS4 and IIS5 supports this setting: under IIS4 this process runs inside MTS.EXE, while under IIS5 it runs inside DLLHOST.EXE.

62.How do you deploy an ASP.NET application?

Ans.You can deploy an ASP.NET Web application using any one of the following three deployment options.

1.XCOPY Deployment

2.Using the Copy Project option in VS .NET

3.Deployment using VS.NET installer

Windows SharePoint Services is the solution that enables you to create Web sites for information sharing and document collaboration. Windows SharePoint Services — a key piece of the information worker infrastructure delivered in Microsoft Windows Server 2003 — provides additional functionality to the Microsoft Office system and other desktop applications, and it serves as a platform for application development.

Office SharePoint Server 2007 builds on top of Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 to provide additional capabilities including collaboration, portal, search, enterprise content management, business process and forms, and business intelligence.

What is Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server?

SharePoint Portal Server is a portal server that connects people, teams, and knowledge across business processes. SharePoint Portal Server integrates information from various systems into one secure solution through single sign-on and enterprise application integration capabilities. It provides flexible deployment and management tools, and facilitates end-to-end collaboration through data aggregation, organization, and searching. SharePoint Portal Server also enables users to quickly find relevant information through customization and personalization of portal content and layout as well as through audience targeting.

What is Microsoft Windows Services?

Microsoft Windows Services is the engine that allows administrators to create Web sites for information sharing and document collaboration. Windows SharePoint Services provides additional functionality to the Microsoft Office System and other desktop applications, as well as serving as a plat form for application development. SharePoint sites provide communities for team collaboration, enabling users to work together on documents, tasks, and projects. The environment for easy and flexible deployment, administration, and application development.

What is the relationship between Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server and Microsoft Windows Services?

Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies (including SharePoint Portal Server and Windows SharePoint Services) deliver highly scalable collaboration solutions with flexible deployment and management tools. Windows SharePoint Services provides sites for team collaboration, while Share Point Portal Server connects these sites, people, and business processes—facilitating knowledge sharing and smart organizations. SharePoint Portal Server also extends the capabilities of Windows SharePoint Services by providing organizational and management tools for SharePoint sites, and by enabling teams to publish information to the entire organization.

Who is Office SharePoint Server 2007 designed for?

Office SharePoint Server 2007 can be used by information workers, IT administrators, and application developers.

What are the main benefits of Office SharePoint Server 2007?

Office SharePoint Server 2007 provides a single integrated platform to manage intranet, extranet, and Internet applications across the enterprise.

    * Business users gain greater control over the storage, security, distribution, and management of their electronic content, with tools that are easy to use and tightly integrated into familiar, everyday applications.
    * Organizations can accelerate shared business processes with customers and partners across organizational boundaries using InfoPath Forms Services–driven solutions.
    * Information workers can find information and people efficiently and easily through the facilitated information-sharing functionality and simplified content publishing. In addition, access to back-end data is achieved easily through a browser, and views into this data can be personalized.
    * Administrators have powerful tools at their fingertips that ease deployment, management, and system administration, so they can spend more time on strategic tasks.
    * Developers have a rich platform to build a new class of applications, called Office Business Applications, that combine powerful developer functionality with the flexibility and ease of deployment of Office SharePoint Server 2007. Through the use of out-of-the-box application services, developers can build richer applications with less code.

What is the difference between Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 for Internet sites and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007?

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 for Internet sites and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 have identical feature functionality. While the feature functionality is similar, the usage rights are different.

If you are creating an Internet, or Extranet, facing website, it is recommended that you use Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 for Internet sites which does not require the purchase client access licenses. Websites hosted using an “Internet sites” edition can only be used for Internet facing websites and all content, information, and applications must be accessible to non-employees. Websites hosted using an “Internet sites” edition cannot be accessed by employees creating, sharing, or collaborating on content which is solely for internal use only, such as an Intranet Portal scenario. See the previous section on licensing for more information on the usage scenarios.

What suites of the 2007 Microsoft Office system work with Office SharePoint Server 2007?

Office Outlook 2007 provides bidirectional offline synchronization with SharePoint document libraries, discussion groups, contacts, calendars, and tasks.

Microsoft Office Groove 2007, included as part of Microsoft Office Enterprise 2007, will enable bidirectional offline synchronization with SharePoint document libraries.

Features such as the document panel and the ability to publish to Excel Services will only be enabled when using Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2007or Office Enterprise 2007.

Excel Services will only work with documents saved in the new Office Excel 2007 file format (XLSX).

How do I invite users to join a Windows SharePoint Services Site? Is the site secure?

SharePoint-based Web sites can be password-protected to restrict access to registered users, who are invited to join via e-mail. In addition, the site administrator can restrict certain members’ roles by assigning different permission levels to view post and edit.

Can I post any kind of document?

You can post documents in many formats, including .pdf, .htm and .doc. In addition, if you are using Microsoft Office XP, you can save documents directly to your Windows SharePoint Services site.

Can I download information directly from a SharePoint site to a personal digital assistant (PDA)?

No you cannot. However, you can exchange contact information lists with Microsoft Outlook.

How long does it take to set up the initial team Web site?

It only takes a few minutes to create a complete Web site. Preformatted forms let you and your team members contribute to the site by filling out lists. Standard forms include announcements, events, contacts, tasks, surveys, discussions and links.

Can I create custom templates?

Yes you can. You can have templates for business plans, doctor’s office, lawyer’s office etc.

How can I make my site public? By default, all sites are created private.

If you want your site to be a public Web site, enable anonymous access for the entire site. Then you can give out your URL to anybody in your business card, e-mail or any other marketing material. The URL for your Web site will be: http:// yoursitename.wss.bcentral.com

Hence, please take special care to name your site. These Web sites are ideal for information and knowledge intensive sites and/or sites where you need to have shared Web workspace. Remember: Under each parent Web site, you can create up to 10 sub-sites each with unique permissions, settings and security rights.

How do the sub sites work?

You can create a sub site for various categories. For example:

    * Departments – finance, marketing, IT
    * Products – electrical, mechanical, hydraulics
    * Projects – Trey Research, Department of Transportation, FDA
    * Team – Retention team, BPR team
    * Clients – new clients, old clients
    * Suppliers – Supplier 1, Supplier 2, Supplier 3
    * Customers – Customer A, Customer B, Customer C
    * Real estate – property A, property B

The URLs for each will be, for example:

    * http://yoursitename.wss.bcentral.com/finance
    * http://yoursitename.wss.bcentral.com/marketing

You can keep track of permissions for each team separately so that access is restricted while maintaining global access to the parent site.

How do I make my site non-restricted?

If you want your site to have anonymous access enabled (i.e., you want to treat it like any site on the Internet that does not ask you to provide a user name and password to see the content of the site), follow these simple steps:

   1. Login as an administrator
   2. Click on site settings
   3. Click on Go to Site Administration
   4. Click on Manage anonymous access
   5. Choose one of the three conditions on what Anonymous users can access:

    *
          o Entire Web site
          o Lists and libraries
          o Nothing

Default condition is nothing; your site has restricted access. The default conditions allow you to create a secure site for your Web site.

Can I get domain name for my Web site?

Unfortunately, no. At this point, we don’t offer domain names for SharePoint sites. But very soon we will be making this available for all our SharePoint site customers. Please keep checking this page for further update on this. Meanwhile, we suggest you go ahead and set up your site and create content for it.

What are picture libraries?

Picture libraries allow you to access a photo album and view it as a slide show or thumbnails or a film strip. You can have separate folder for each event, category, etc

What are the advantages of a hosted SharePoint vs. one that is on an in-house server?

    * No hardware investment, i.e. lower costs
    * No software to download – ready to start from the word go
    * No IT resources – Anyone who has used a Web program like Hotmail can use it
    * Faster deployment

Can I ask users outside of my organization to participate in my Windows SharePoint Services site?

Yes. You can manage this process using the Administration Site Settings. Simply add users via their e-mail alias and assign permissions such as Reader or Contributor.

Are there any IT requirements or downloads required to set up my SharePoint site?

No. You do not need to download any code or plan for any IT support. Simply complete the on-line signup process and provide us your current and correct email address. Once you have successfully signed up and your site has been provisioned, we will send a confirmation to the email address you provided.

I am located outside of the United States. Are there any restrictions or requirements for accessing the Windows SharePoint Services?

No. There are no system or bandwidth limitations for international trial users. Additionally language packs have been installed which allow users to set up sub-webs in languages other than English. These include: Arabic, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese (Brazilian), Spanish and Swedish.

Are there any browser recommendations?

Yes. Microsoft recommends using the following browsers for viewing and editing Windows SharePoint Services sites: Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.01 with Service Pack 2, Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.5 with Service Pack 2, Internet Explorer 6, Netscape Navigator 6.2 or later.

What security levels are assigned to users?

Security levels are assigned by the administrator who is adding the user. There are four levels by default and additional levels can be composed as necessary.

    * Reader – Has read-only access to the Web site.
    * Contributor – Can add content to existing document libraries and lists.
    * Web Designer – Can create lists and document libraries and customize pages in the Web site.
    * Administrator – Has full control of the Web site.

How secure are Windows SharePoint Services sites hosted by Microsoft?

Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services Technical security measures provide firewall protection, intrusion detection, and web-publishing rules. The Microsoft operation center team tests and deploys software updates in order to maintain the highest level of security and software reliability. Software hot-fixes and service packs are tested and deployed based on their priority and level of risk. Security related hot-fixes are rapidly deployed into the environment to address current threats. A comprehensive software validation activity ensures software stability through regression testing prior to deployment.

What is the difference between an Internet and an intranet site?

An internet site is a normal site that anyone on the internet can access (e.g., www.msn.com, www.microsoft.com, etc.). You can set up a site for your company that can be accessed by anyone without any user name and password. The internet is used for public presence and a primary marketing tool managed typically by web programmers and a system administrator.

An intranet (or internal network), though hosted on a Web site, can only be accessed by people who are members of a specific network. They need to have a login and password that was assigned to them when they were added to the site by the site administrator. The intranet is commonly used as an internal tool for giving employees access to company information. Content is driven by business relevance, business rules and has increasingly become a common tool in larger organizations. An intranet is becoming more and more the preferred method for employees to interact with each other and the central departments in an organization, whether or not the organization has a Web presence.

What is a workspace?

A site or workspace is when you want a new place for collaborating on Web pages, lists and document libraries. For example, you might create a site to manage a new team or project, collaborate on a document or prepare for a meeting.

What are the various kinds of roles the users can have?

A user can be assigned one of the following roles

    * Reader – Has read-only access to the Web site.
    * Contributor – Can add content to existing document libraries and lists.
    * Web Designer – Can create lists and document libraries and customize pages in the Web site.
    * Administrator – Has full control of the Web site.

Can more than one person use the same login?

If the users sharing that login will have the same permissions and there is no fear of them sharing a password, then yes. Otherwise, this is discouraged.

How customizable is the user-to-user access?

User permissions apply to an entire Web, not to documents themselves. However, you can have additional sub webs that can optionally have their own permissions. Each user can be given any of four default roles. Additional roles can be defined by the administrator.

Can each user have access to their own calendar?

Yes there are two ways to do this,

    * by creating a calendar for each user, or
    * by creating a calendar with a view for each user

How many files can I upload?

There is no restriction in place except that any storage consumed beyond that provided by the base offering may have an additional monthly charge associated with them.

What types of files can I upload / post to the site?

The only files restricted are those ending with the following extensions: .asa, .asp, .ida, .idc, .idq. Microsoft reserves the right to add additional file types to this listing at any time. Also, no content that violates the terms of service may be uploaded or posted to the site.

Can SharePoint be linked to an external data source?

SharePoint data can be opened with Access and Excel as an external data source. Thus, SharePoint can be referenced as an external data source. SharePoint itself cannot reference an external data source.

Can SharePoint be linked to a SQL database?

SharePoint 2007 Portal Server (MOSS2K7) allows connections to SQL based datasources via the Business Data Catalog (BDC). The BDC also allows connecting to data via Web Services.

Can I customize my Windows SharePoint Services site?

YES! Windows SharePoint Services makes updating sites and their content from the browser easier then ever.

SharePoint includes tools that let you create custom lists, calendars, page views, etc. You can apply a theme; add List, Survey and Document Library Web Parts to a page; create personal views; change logos; connect Web Parts and more.

To fully customize your site, you can use Microsoft FrontPage 2003. Specifically, you can use FrontPage themes and shared borders, and also use FrontPage to create photo galleries and top ten lists, utilize standard usage reports, and integrate automatic Web content.

Will Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 run on a 64-bit version of Microsoft Windows?

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, Office SharePoint Server 2007, Office Forms Server 2007, and Office SharePoint Server 2007 for Search will support 64-bit versions of Windows Server 2003.

How Office SharePoint Server 2007 can help you?

Office SharePoint Server 2007 can help us:

Manage content and streamline processes. Comprehensively manage and control unstructured content like Microsoft Office documents, Web pages, Portable Document Format file (PDF) files, and e-mail messages. Streamline business processes that are a drain on organizational productivity.

Improve business insight. Monitor your business, enable better-informed decisions, and respond proactively to business events.

Find and share information more simply. Find information and expertise wherever they are located. Share knowledge and simplify working with others within and across organizational boundaries.

Empower IT to make a strategic impact. Increase responsiveness of IT to business needs and reduce the number of platforms that have to be maintained by supporting all the intranet, extranet, and Web applications across the enterprise with one integrated platform.

Office SharePoint Server 2007 capabilities can help improve organizational effectiveness by connecting people, processes, and information.

Office SharePoint Server 2007 provides these capabilities in an integrated server offering, so your organization doesn’t have to integrate fragmented technology solutions itself.

What are the features that the portal components of Office SharePoint Server 2007 include?

The portal components of Office SharePoint Server 2007 include features that are especially useful for designing, deploying, and managing enterprise intranet portals, corporate Internet Web sites, and divisional portal sites. The portal components make it easier to connect to people within the organization who have the right skills, knowledge, and project experience.

What are the advanced features of MOSS 2007?

    * User Interface (UI) and navigation enhancements
    * Document management enhancements
    * The new Workflow engine
    * Office 2007 Integration
    * New Web Parts
    * New Site-type templates
    * Enhancements to List technology
    * Web Content Management
    * Business Data Catalog
    * Search enhancements
    * Report Center
    * Records Management
    * Business Intelligence and Excel Server
    * Forms Server and InfoPath
    * The “Features” feature
    * Alternate authentication providers and Forms-based authentication

What are the features of the new Content management in Office SharePoint 2007?

The new and enhanced content management features in Office SharePoint Server 2007 fall within three areas:

    * Document management
    * Records management
    * Web content management

Office SharePoint Server 2007 builds on the core document management functionality provided by Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, including check in and check out, versioning, metadata, and role-based granular access controls. Organizations can use this functionality to deliver enhanced authoring, business document processing, Web content management and publishing, records management, policy management, and support for multilingual publishing.

Does a SharePoint Web site include search functionality?

Yes. SharePoint Team Services provides a powerful text-based search feature that helps you find documents and information fast.

Write the features of the search component of Office SharePoint Server 2007?

The search component of Office SharePoint Server 2007 has been significantly enhanced by this release of SharePoint Products and Technologies. New features provide:

    * A consistent and familiar search experience.
    * Increased relevance of search results.
    * New functions to search for people and expertise.
    * Ability to index and search data in line-of-business applications and
    * Improved manageability and extensibility.

What are the benefits of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007?

    * Provide a simple, familiar, and consistent user experience.
    * Boost employee productivity by simplifying everyday business activities.
    * Help meet regulatory requirements through comprehensive control over content.
    * Effectively manage and repurpose content to gain increased business value.
    * Simplify organization-wide access to both structured and unstructured information across disparate systems.
    * Connect people with information and expertise.
    * Accelerate shared business processes across organizational boundaries.
    * Share business data without divulging sensitive information.
    * Enable people to make better-informed decisions by presenting business-critical information in one central location.
    * Provide a single, integrated platform to manage intranet, extranet, and Internet applications across the enterprise.

Will SharePoint Portal Server and Team Services ever merge?

The products will come together because they are both developed by the Office team.

What does partial trust mean the Web Part developer?

If an assembly is installed into the BIN directory, the code must be ensured that provides error handling in the event that required permissions are not available. Otherwise, unhandled security exceptions may cause the Web Part to fail and may affect page rendering on the page where the Web Part appears.

How can I raise the trust level for assemblies installed in the BIN directory?

Windows SharePoint Services can use any of the following three options from ASP.NET and the CLR to provide assemblies installed in the BIN directory with sufficient permissions. The following table outlines the implications and requirements for each option.

Option Pros Cons

Increase the trust level for the entire virtual server. For more information, see “Setting the trust level for a virtual server” Easy to implement.

In a development environment, increasing the trust level allows you to test an assembly with increased permissions while allowing you to recompile assemblies directly into the BIN directory without resetting IIS. This option is least secure.

This option affects all assemblies used by the virtual server. There is no guarantee the destination server has the required trust level. Therefore, Web Parts may not work once installed on the destination server.

Create a custom policy file for your assemblies. For more information, see “How do I create a custom policy file?” Recommended approach.

This option is most secure.

An assembly can operate with a unique policy that meets the minimum permission requirements for the assembly.

By creating a custom security policy, you can ensure the destination server can run your Web Parts.

Requires the most configuration of all three options. Install your assemblies in the GAC

Easy to implement. This grants Full trust to your assembly without affecting the trust level of assemblies installed in the BIN directory.

This option is less secure.

Assemblies installed in the GAC are available to all virtual servers and applications on a server running Windows SharePoint Services. This could represent a potential security risk as it potentially grants a higher level of permission to your assembly across a larger scope than necessary

In a development environment, you must reset IIS every time you recompile assemblies.

Licensing issues may arise due to the global availability of your assembly.

Does SharePoint work with NFS?

Yes and no. It can crawl documents on an NFS volume, but the sharepoint database or logs cannot be stored there.

How is SharePoint Portal Server different from the Site Server?

Site Server has search capabilities but these are more advanced using SharePoint. SPS uses digital dashboard technology which provides a nice interface for creating web parts and showing them on dashboards (pages). SS doesn’t have anything as advanced as that. The biggest difference would be SPS document management features which also integrate with web folders and MS Office.

What would you like to see in the next version of SharePoint?

A few suggestions:

   1. SPS and STS on same machine
   2. Tree view of Categories and Folders
   3. General Discussion Web Part
   4. Personalization of Dashboards
   5. Role Customization
   6. Email to say WHY a document has been rejected for Approval
   7. More ways to customize the interface
   8. Backup and restore an individual Workspaces
   9. Filter for Visio
  10. Better way to track activity on SPS
  11. Ability to Save as from Adobe to space on My Network Places

Why Sharepoint is not a viable solution for enterprise wide deployments?

Planning an enterprise deployment using SharePoint features is a very difficult task unless you can establish a Service Oriented Architecture, using AD for managing security with well defined roles based information access(EISA). Sounds reasonable, although it seems difficult to deploy with the tools limitations in document storage.

Document management does not scale beyond a single server, but scales great within a single server. For example, a quad Xeon machine with 4GB of RAM works great for a document management server that has about 900,000 – 1,000,000 document, but if you need to store 50,000,000 document and want to have them all in one single workspace then it does not scale at all. If you need a scenario like this, you need to plan your deployment right and it should scale for you, it just does not right out of the box. If you are using your server as a portal and search server most for the most part it scales great. You can have many different servers crawl content sources and have separate servers searching and serving the content.

If you have < 750,000 documents per server and fewer than 4 content sources and fewer than 50,000 users, SPS should scale just fine for your needs with the proper planning.

What are the actual advantages of SharePoint Portal Services (SPS) over SharePoint Team Services (STS)?

SharePoint Portal Services (SPS) has MUCH better document management. It has check-in, check-out, versioning, approval, publishing, subscriptions, categories, etc. STS does not have these features, or they are very scaled back. SharePoint team Services (SPS) has a better search engine, and can crawl multiple content sources. STS cannot. STS is easier to manage and much better for a team environment where there is not much Document Management going on. SPS is better for an organization, or where Document Management is crucial.

How Does SharePoint work?

The browser sends a DAV packet to IIS asking to perform a document check in. PKMDASL.DLL, an ISAPI DLL, parses the packet and sees that it has the proprietary INVOKE command. Because of the existence of this command, the packet is passed off to msdmserv.exe, who in turn processes the packet and uses EXOLEDB to access the WSS, perform the operation and send the results back to the user in the form of XML.

How do I open an older version of a document?

Normally, all previous versions are located in the shadow, so if you right click a published document from within the web folders, go to properties and then the third tab, versions you can view older versions.

If you want to do this in code:

strURL = “url of the last published version”
Set oVersion = New PKMCDO.KnowledgeVersion
Set prmRs = oVersion.VersionHistory(strURL)
Set oVersion = Nothing

prmRS will contain a recordset, which contains the url to the old versions in the shadow.

Why do the workspace virtual directories show the error “stop sign” symbol in the IIS snap-in?

If World Wide Web Publishing Service (W3SVC) starts before Microsoft Exchange Information Store (MSExchangeIS), “stop sign” symbols appear under the Default Web Site folder of the Internet Information Services console in Microsoft Management Console (MMC).

There is a dependency between the local paths of the SharePoint Portal Server virtual directories and the MSExchangeIS. You must start MSExchangeIS first, followed by W3SVC.

Complete the following steps to prevent the stop signs from appearing each time you restart:

   1. Change the Startup type for W3SVC to Manual.
   2. Restart the server. The MSExchangeIS service starts automatically.
   3. Start W3SVC.

What newsgroups are available?

There are two,

    * microsoft.public.sharepoint.portalserver and
    * microsoft.public.sharepoint.portalserver.development.

What is SharePoint from a Technical Perspective?

Technically SharePoint illustrates neatly what Microsoft’s .net strategy is all about: integrating Windows with the Web. Microsoft has previously made accessing stuff on a PC easier, (Windows) then on a network (NT) and now on the web (.NET). SharePoint is an application written to let a user access a web accessible directory tree called the Web Storage System.

SharePoint was written with a set of technologies that allow the programmer to pass data, functions, parameters over HTTP, the web’s medium. These are XML, XSL and SOAP, to name a few I understand the basics of!

To the user it looks easy, like Hotmail, but every time they click a button or a link, a lot has to happen behind the scenes to do what they want to do quickly and powerfully. Not as easy as you might think, but SharePoint does it for you. Accessing this Web storage system and the server itself is also done using technologies like ADO, CDO, PKMCDO, LDAP, DDSC, ADSC. More on these later. SharePoint is a great example of how the Internet Platform can be extended and integrated into an existing well adopted technology, Windows.

What is SharePoint from an Administration Perspective?

Administering SharePoint mainly consists of setting it up, which is much easier than you expect, adding the content, which can be just dragging and dropping in whole directory structures and files, and then organizing the files better by giving them categories or other metadata. This is done either through the Web interface or through the SharePoint Client: a program what means you can access SharePoint as a Web folder and then right-click files to select options like “edit profile”. Or add files by dragging them in individually or in bulk.

Setting the security is also important, using NT accounts, either NT4 or Active Directory (or both in mixed mode) you can give users access to files/folders the same way as you do in standard Windows. Users can be grouped and the groups given access privileges to help manage this better. Also SharePoint has 3 Roles that a User or Group can be given on a particular item. Readers can see the item (i.e. document/file or folder) but not change it, Authors can see and edit items and coordinators can set security privileges for the part of the system they have control over. Thus, you could set 12 different coordinators for 12 different folder trees, and they could manage who can do what within that area only.

What is SharePoint from a Users Perspective?

From a Users perspective SharePoint is a way of making documents and folders on the Windows platform accessible over the web. The user visits the SharePoint Portal web page, and from there they can add documents, change documents & delete documents. Through this Portal, these documents are now available for discussion, collaboration, versioning and being managed through a workflow. Hence the name “Share-Point”. Details about the document can be saved too, such as: who wrote it, when, for whom, its size, and version, category or target audience. These can then be used to find the document through SharePoint’s Search facility. Even documents not “in” SharePoint can be included in the search engine’s index so they become part of the portal. All in all, it’s a great way to get stuff up on the web for users with average technical skills, and for administrators to manage the content.

What are the various Sharepoint 2003 and Exchange integration points?

Link to Outlook

This is a button on contacts or events lists that lets Outlook 2003 add a pst file named Sharepoint Folders and it links to the data on the site. It’s read-only, but you could make the home page for that PST be the Sharepoint site for easier viewing. The link to outlook feature seems more to be where some can public a calendar, but not want too much collaboration. For example, a holiday schedule, company meeting schedule, etc, can be made available for people to be able to view from Outlook without having to go to a web browser. Another nice thing about OL2K3 is that you can compare these calendars with others side by side.

Searching Public Folders

With SPS you can index Exchange’s public folders with the search engine so that all that precious public folder content is searchable. You’ll want to look at content sources and indexing in Sharepoint administration.

Displaying Public Folders in a web part

Since exchange web-enables public folders, you can create a web part that displays that content. IE, http://exchangeserver/Public/IT/Helpdesk will display the IT/Helpdesk public folder via OWA. So you add the Page Viewer web part to a page and point it at that URL. The key here is to add ?cmd=contents to the end of the url if you don’t want the navigator pane on the left.

Smart web parts

Some of the web parts that come with SPS allow you to add a web part to a page that actually takes the users outlook info (calendar, inbox, contacts, tasks) and put them into the page.

The SmartPart Web Part project template for Visual Studio allows developers to create quickly a project which contains the base infrastructure to:

   * write a web user control (ASCX)
   * wrap the user control in a SmartPart instance
   * generate a SharePoint Solution file (WSP) for easy deployment
   * generate a setup package for a wizard driven installation

Can SharePoint compare two document versions?

“In Word 2003, you can compare documents side by side. Open two documents. Then, from the Window menu of one of them, select the Compare Side By Side command. If you have only two documents open, the command will automatically choose to compare them. If you have three or more documents open, you’ll have to select which document to compare with the current file.

A floating toolbar with two buttons will open. If the button on the left is selected, Word will scroll both documents at the same time. Press the button on the right side of the toolbar to return to where the cursor was located when you started comparing.”

What are the integration differences between SPS 2003 and the various Office versions?

SPS webpage can detect you have installed the Office 2003 and run local dll to implement some SPS function, e.g. multi-file upload only works when you have office 2003 installed.

Integration with Office XP is gone.

You will get guys telling you that you can integrate with SPSv2 if you install a backwards compatible document library – but that’s really just putting a bit of SPS 2001 on the server.

Believe me, check-in, check-out, which are themselves very basic, are not available from inside Office XP, or even from the context menu in Windows Explorer.

The ONLY option you have is to use the web interface to check-in or check-out.

General answers about behavior are not what the employer is looking for. You must describe in detail a particular event, project, or experience and you dealt with the situation, and what the outcome was. The premise behind behavioral interviewing is that the most accurate predictor of future performance is past performance in similar situations.

What is Behavioral interviewing:

•  Behavioral interviewing is a technique used by employers in which the questions asked assist the employer in making predictions about a potential employee’s future success based on actual past behaviors, instead of based on responses to hypothetical questions.
• In behavior-based interviews, you are asked to give specific examples of when you demonstrated particular behaviors or skills.
• General answers about behavior are not what the employer is looking for. You must describe in detail a particular event, project, or experience and you dealt with the situation, and what the outcome was.

Although it will be more difficult to prepare concrete answers in advance to these interviews (as opposed to traditional ones), you can and should take some time to review your understanding of yourself, your past successes and concrete examples of your accomplishments. Work on honesty, sincerity and candidness. When you start to tell a behavioral story, the interviewer may try to sort out the details by understanding your behaviors.

The interviewer will probe for more depth, detail or understanding with questions like: “What were you thinking at that point?” or “Tell me more about what you discussed with that person.”

If you’ve told a story that’s anything but totally honest, your response will not hold up through these probes.

If you have a spouse or friend that can pose as an interviewer for you, it can be helpful for you to practice answering open-ended questions, such as the following. Have your friend probe further:

1. Describe a situation in which you were able to use persuasion to successfully convince someone to see things your way.
2. Describe a time when you were faced with a stressful situation that demonstrated your coping skills.
3. Give me a specific example of a time when you used good judgment and logic in solving a problem.
4. Give me an example of a time when you set a goal and were able to meet or achieve it.
5. Tell me about a time when you had to use your presentation skills to influence someone’s opinion.
6. Give me a specific example of a time when you had to conform to a policy with which you did not agree.
7. Please discuss an important written document you were required to complete.
8. Tell me about a time when you had to go above and beyond the call of duty in order to get a job done.
9. Tell me about a time when you had too many things to do and you were required to prioritize your tasks.
10. Give me an example of a time when you had to make a split second decision.
11. What is your typical way of dealing with conflict? Give me an example.
12. Tell me about a time you were able to successfully deal with another person even when that individual may not have personally liked you (or vice versa).
13. Tell me about a difficult decision you’ve made in the last year.
14. Give me an example of a time when something you tried to accomplish and failed.
15. Give me an example of when you showed initiative and took the lead.
16. Tell me about a recent situation in which you had to deal with a very upset customer or co-worker.
17. Give me an example of a time when you motivated others.
18. Tell me about a time when you delegated a project effectively.
19. Give me an example of a time when you used your fact-finding skills to solve a problem.
20. Tell me about a time when you missed an obvious solution to a problem.
21. Describe a time when you anticipated potential problems and developed preventive measures.
22. Tell me about a time when you were forced to make an unpopular decision.
23. Please tell me about a time you had to fire a friend.
24. Describe a time when you set your sights too high (or too low).
25. Tell me about a time that you demonstrated initiative?
26. Describe a situation when have you motivated yourself to complete an assignment or task that you did not want to do?
27. Think about a difficult boss, professor or other person. What made him or her difficult? How did you successfully interact with this person?
28. Think about a complex project or assignment that you have been assigned. What approach did you take to complete it?
29. Tell me about the riskiest decision that you have made. What were your considerations in making that particular decision.
30. Can you tell me about an occasion where you needed to work with a group to get a job done? What were the challenges and difficulties and how did you face these?
31. Describe a situation when you or a group that you were a part of were in danger of missing a deadline. What did you do?
32. Tell me about a time when you worked with a person who did things very differently from you. How did you get the job done? Would you work with that person again if given the choice?
33. Describe your three greatest accomplishments to date.
34. Tell me about a situation when you had to learn something new in a short time. How did you proceed?
35. Can you tell me about a complex problem that you solved? Describe the process you utilized.
36. Give me an example of a time when you had to make a split second decision.
37. Give me an example of a bad decision that you made and what you learned from that mistake?
38. Tell me about a time when something you tried to accomplish and failed. What did you learn from that failure?
39. Tell me about a time when you missed an obvious solution to a problem. What did you learn from that mistake?
40. Tell me about a challenge that you successfully met.
41. Describe a situation when you had to go above and beyond the call of duty in order to get a job done.
42. Please tell me about one or two unpopular decisions you have made. What were the positive and negative outcomes of those decisions?
43. What leadership positions have you held? Describe your leadership style. What aspects of your leadership style have you changed or deleted once you learned that these aspects were not successful?
44. Give me a specific example of a time when you used good judgment and logic in solving a problem.
45. Summarize a situation where you successfully persuaded others to do something or to see your point of view. Tell me about a time when you had to use your presentation skills to influence someone’s opinion.
46. Give an example of when your persistence had the biggest payoff.
47. How have you most constructively dealt with disappointment and turned it into a learning experience? Please give me a concrete example in your life.
48. Tell me of a time when you had to conform to a policy with which you did not agree.
49. Describe a situation in which you effectively developed a solution to a problem by combining different perspectives or approaches.
50. Describe a time when you were faced with problems or stresses at work that tested your coping skills. What did you do?
51. Give an example of a time when you had to be relatively quick in coming to a decision.
52. Give me an example of an important goal you had to set and tell me about your progress in reaching that goal.
53. Describe the most creative work-related project you have completed.
54. Give me an example of a problem you faced on the job, and tell me how you solved it.
55. Tell me about a situation in the past year in which you had to deal with a very upset customer or co-worker.
56. Give me an example of when you had to show good leadership.

Behavioral Interview questions to test analysis skills:

57. Give me a specific example of a time when you used good judgment and logic in solving a problem.
58. Give me an example of a time when you used your fact-finding skills to solve a problem.
59. Describe a time when you anticipated potential problems and developed preventive measures.
60. What steps do you usually follow to study a problem before making a decision?

Behavioral Interview questions to test leadership skills:

61. Give an example of your ability to build motivation in your co-workers, classmates or a volunteer committee
62. What is the toughest group that you’ve had to get cooperation from? Describe how you handled it. What was the outcome?

Behavioral Interview questions to test communication skills:

63. Describe the most significant written document, report or presentation that you had to complete.
64. Tell me about a time when you had to use your presentation skills to influence someone’s opinion.

Technical or professional skills:

65. As a customer service representative, tell me about a time when you have to deal with angry customers.
66. As an accountant, give me an example of a time when you came across questionable accounting practices. How did you handle the situation?

Teamwork:

67. Describe a situation where your colleagues disagreed with your ideas. What did you do?
68. Tell me about a time when a colleague was not doing his share of work. What did you do?
69. Describe a situation in which you found your supervisor’s idea was not correct, what action did you take?

Planning and Organization:

70. Give an example of what you’ve done when your project plan was interrupted by unforeseen circumstances.
71. Describe a time when you had many projects due at the same time. What steps did you take to get them all done?

Motivation:

72. Give examples of your experiences in a job that were satisfying. Give examples of your experiences that were dissatisfying.
73. Describe a situation when you were able to have a positive influence on the actions of others.

I compiled this list based on my own research on internet as well as meeting people ( Employers and candidates )

Before my job interviews, I took some time to ponder and prepare my answers to these common interview questions. I even wrote out my answers and studied them, so that the language and explanations came naturally to me during my time under the interview spotlight.

Brainstorm The Best Answers

It’s also a good idea to brainstorm possible questions related to your specific situation. For example, if you are interviewing at a Title I school, they might ask you, “What do you know about Title I?” Think of everything now, so that your brain can be on automatic pilot in the interview.

1. Why did you decide to become a teacher?
2. Have you ever taken care of someone? Did you enjoy it?
3. Do you consider yourself a risk taker? (Give an example to back up your answer.)
4. Are you a positive and energetic person? (Give an example to back up your answer.)
5. If a student said she thought you were the worst teacher she ever had, what would you say?
6. If I were your principal and we were setting goals for next year, what would they be?
7. What is the last book you read?
8. Have you ever considered publishing a book?
9. Some people say you should demand respect. Do you agree or disagree?
10. Tell me about yourself.
11. How would you rank these in importance and why? Planning, discipline, methods, evaluation.
12. If a student came to you and said, “None of the other students like me,” what would you tell him/her?
13. Are you an empathetic person? Give an example.
14. How can you tell that a person is a good listener?
15. Are you an objective person? Give an example.
16. What do you want to do with your life?
17. How do you feel if a student does not meet a deadline?
18. It is the first day of class, you are writing something on the board and a paper wad hits you in the back, what would you do?  Later the same day, if all the students drop their pencils, what do you do?
19. What was the most frustrating thing that happened to you as a student teacher?
20. What was the best thing?
21. Do you believe you should build rapport with students?  If yes, how?
22. How do you give your students recognition?  Do you think a student can have too much recognition?
23. How do you encourage students to learn?  Can a student be forced to learn?
24. How do you handle a child who seems gifted, but is a discipline problem?
25. How do you feel about computers in the classroom?
26. How do you present a new word to a class?
27. What are your strengths?  What are your weaknesses?
28. What is the role of the principal?  Does a conflict exist between your perception of a principal’s role and his/her role as your evaluator?
29. Describe your student teaching experience.
30. During your student teaching, were you ever involved with a situation at school involving racial tension? If so, how did you handle it?
31. How do you establish authority/discipline?  What do you do when a discipline problem arises?
32. What subjects have you taught?
33. Are you patient?  Give an example.
34. Do you ever feel angry towards your students?
35. What will you be doing in five years?
36. What is your educational philosophy?
37. If you could create the ideal school, what would it be like?
38. Do you like to be challenged? (Give an example to back up your answer.)
39. What do you like most/dislike most about teaching?
40. How do you feel about noise in the classroom?  How do you handle noise in the classroom?
41. How would you handle making a difficult phone call to a parent?
42. Tell me about yourself.
43. What type of reading program did you use in student teaching?
44. If I walked into your classroom during reading time, what would I see?
45. Tell me what you know about the 4-block Literacy Model.
46. What is your personal educational philosophy?
47. If you could design the ideal classroom for the elementary grades what would it look like?
48. Which subject area do you believe is your strength, which is your weakest? What steps will you take to improve in this area?
49. What are the most important or worthwhile qualifications of a good teacher?
50. What are your strengths and weaknesses as a teacher?
51. Describe your student teaching successes and failures?
52. Describe a good lesson, explain why it was good.
53.  How would you go about planning a lesson?
54. How would you individualize a curriculum for students at various levels?
55. How would you identify special needs of students?
56.  What methods do you use for classroom management? Describe one difficult incident with a student, and how you handled it.
57. How would you handle difficult parents?
58. Give me an example of a rule or procedure in your classroom?
59. What methods have you used or would you use to assess student learning?
60. What does being “at-risk” for school failure mean?
61. What are some of the factors/conditions that might put a child at-risk?
62.  What experience have you had incorporating computers in a classroom?
63. What grade level would you be most comfortable teaching?
64. Are you a team player? If so, please give me an example.
65. What was the last educational book you read?

Promote pharmaceutical drug sales by forging relationships with physicians, hospitals and managed care organizations. Through one-on-one sales presentations, group discussions and educational programs, a sales  representative presents the latest in medical news and treatment programs. 

Candidates require strong interpersonal skills, a team orientation and a mature, resilient outlook. Additional qualities include  strong analytical and communications skills.  Experience in the pharmaceutical industry and in advertising, marketing and sales, recent college graduates, and those with advanced business degrees are encouraged to apply.

 Sample Interview Questions and Answers with Explanation and Tips

What is your perception of a typical day for a pharmaceutical representative?

THOUGHT PROCESS:
The Hiring Manager is looking for your perception of what the representative does every day. They are also looking for work ethic (working early, late) and commitment to getting the job done. The more you can parallel what you are currently doing to the pharmaceutical representative’s day, the better off you are. Show them you have done research and have spoken with someone in the industry.

*Note: If you can ride with a representative do that. This is a selling position-DO NOT SAY THIS IS A PUBLIC RELATIONS POSITION. Do NOT answer, “Drop samples and have dialogue with physicians.” Your interview is dead with that answer

SAMPLE ANSWER:
I have an idea of what the day is like for a pharmaceutical representative and I think it parallels some of what my normal day is like. As a representative I would see as many of my assigned physicians as possible and sell them on why they should use my drug over the competition. I know some physicians are difficult to reach, so I would try to catch them early (6-7AM) in the hospital or after hours, like I have to do with some of my customers.

Some days I would utilize a lunch to better impact difficult to see physicians. After 5:00 PM I would enter my calls in the computer (or after each call) and pick up e-mails. At night I would look over pre-call planning for my next day. I don’t know if you entertain physicians like I do with my customers currently but I would do some entertaining at night (restaurant) or on the weekends, (golf, hunting, fishing)-whatever it takes to beat my numbers.

What do you think is the most challenging aspect of a pharmaceutical representative?

THOUGHT PROCESS:
Again, The Hiring Manager is really trying to determine if you know the true challenges a representative faces daily. They are also trying to determine if you have the skills to meet these challenges.

SAMPLE ANSWER:
Well number one, I think its probably getting quality time with the physician to impact prescribing behavior. Another challenge I think you would face is there are physicians that don’t see representatives. You have to be creative in finding a way to gain access to them. If you are currently in sales and face these obstacles in your present job, be sure to add this to your answer.

You are given a territory and a list of physicians to call on. How would you organize and prioritize your call schedule?

THOUGHT PROCESS:
The Hiring Manager wants to determine that you set your priorities based on the greatest return on time invested. You should organize your territory based on calling on the customers with the greatest sales potential. He is looking to see if you know the “80/20″rule. Eighty percent of your business comes from 20 percent of your customers. Your goal is to find the 20 percent as quickly as you can. After the 20 percent has been contacted you move down the list and work on developing new clients.

SAMPLE ANSWER:
I would analyze my territory, and determine the accounts that have the greatest sales potential. I would quickly work to determine my most profitable 20 percent of my clients. Once they have been contacted and I feel comfortable with my relationship with these clients, I would then work the rest of my customers and develop new clients.

Tell me about your last manager. Did you like him/her? If I was your manager, what is the best way to coach/mentor you to success? What qualities should a successful manager possess? Describe the relationship that should exist between the supervisor and those reporting to him or her?

THOUGHT PROCESS:
The Hiring Manger is looking to see if he can work with you. The Hiring Manager is also looking at your perception of authority, your willingness to learn, how you handle criticism, and how you like to be managed. The Hiring Manager needs to know how to manage each of his/her sales representatives and provide the support and or tools to help the sales representative meet the goals. The relationship that should exist between the manager and sales representative should be open, honest, encouraging, and accountable on both sides. Be careful on how you answer this question. Again, no former manager bashing allowed!

SAMPLE ANSWER:
I liked my manager and we had a positive working relationship. We had similar thought processes on how to run my territory and how to best manage me. The best way to manage me is to give me all the tools (training, funding) necessary to be successful. Then let me run my territory in a way to exceed expectations. I would like a manager who periodically rides with me so he/she can understand my account and provide open constructive criticism. I view my territory as my own business and take accountability for its performance. I feel the successful qualities in a manager are as follows: high expectations, openness, honesty, excellent communication skills and the ability to assist me in my career development and goal attainment. I want an open and candid relationship with my manager.

How do you think you would get a Physician to switch to your drug?

THOUGHT PROCESS:
The Hiring Manger is looking for sales skills and your strategic process in dealing with physicians.

SAMPLE ANSWER:
First, I would NOT expect the physician to make a sudden change to my drug if he is happy with the drug he is currently prescribing. I am going to have to start small and expand his usage (nibble away market share). I would determine what influences his behavior: reprints, speaker programs, peers, and formularies. I would use a combination of the appropriate tools to gain physician agreement on my drug’s effectiveness. After this, I would gain commitment from him to use the drug on a specific patient type. After the physician has tried my drug on this patient type, I would get him to notice the success on this patient when the patient comes back in for a follow up visit. When the physician admitted efficacy, I would then gain commitment for use in other patient types. This is comparable with my current business.

 Some Additional Questions:

1. Why did you decide pharmaceutical sales would be the right career for you?

This is the most basic of questions, but you are almost certain to be asked this question. While people interviewing for other types of positions are asked why they decided on their career choice, it is very important that you answer this question correctly for a pharmaceutical sales interview.

First tell them that you love selling and site examples where you have done this even if you haven’t been employed as a salesperson. Mention instances where you persuaded someone to “buy in” to your ideas, etc. That is selling! Mention that you have always been highly motivated, energetic, and enthusiastic. Successful sales people have all of these qualities as well as being creative and resourceful. Be prepared to cite examples where you displayed these behavioral characteristics.

Next, expound upon why pharmaceutical sales would be right for you. This is a good time to pull out the information that you have collected during your research. You can explain how stable the industry is, how exciting it would be to be part of such a dynamic field, and one where the opportunity to help thousands of people is a reality. State that this would give you tremendous job satisfaction. Also let them know that you realize the opportunities for personal and professional growth are tremendous with pharmaceutical sales companies. You will thrive on the daily challenges of performing a pharmaceutical sales representatives job. (This would be a great time to mention the “field preceptorship” and how much you enjoyed your day in the representative’s territory!) The research you have done on their company and the industry, and the extra effort you have put forth to spend a day in the field to see for yourself what a pharmaceutical sales representative does will give you tremendous credibility. You will be viewed as a serious candidate!

1. What is your current occupation?

Give an honest answer, but highlight any area of responsibility that you may have which would be seen as a benefit for someone in pharmaceutical sales. This would be a good time to show the “Career Comparison” information that you have placed in your Personal Presentation Binder. You will have already compared your job responsibilities to that of a pharmaceutical sales representative. Were you responsible for marketing a product or idea to others? Have you analyzed a “buyer” to determine that buyer’s potential? Do you have daily contact with physicians or other medical personnel in your day-to-day activities? These are excellent job responsibility areas to compare with pharmaceutical sales job responsibilities. Be careful not to make a negative statement. Always expect to be asked to prove any statement that you make!

1. I see you have held several different positions over the last five years? Can you explain why?

The obvious objective in this question is to determine whether you are a “job-hopper.” Training and educating pharmaceutical sales representatives is very time-consuming and expensive. A bad choice would yield an ineffective pharmaceutical sales representative and one that would potentially leave the job “undone” because that person has again decided to do something else. The district manager will attempt to ascertain whether you are a dependable person and whether you do indeed really want a career that offers upward mobility. He must be convinced that you will stay and work smart. If you have changed positions in order to increase the challenge of your job and allow upward mobility, then that is an excellent reason for changing jobs. Career transitions or job transitions made to increase compensation for your work is another good reason.

1. When did you decide to pursue a pharmaceutical sales career position?

You might reply that after your extensive research into this career field including actually going on a field preceptorship, that you believe this a perfect career for you. Then you must explain why it is perfect for you. It is perfect because you thrive on the type of challenges faced by pharmaceutical sales representatives! You want to make a difference at a job you are certain you will love. Pharmaceutical sales is a perfect match for your personality and work experience. Then supply proof for your statement.

1. How long having you been seeking employment in the pharmaceutical sales industry?

Your answer here will be important. You have the opportunity to make yourself look good with the right answer. If you have been looking for a position for a long time, six months or more, then you need to present yourself as a tenacious person who never gives up because you are absolutely certain that you are the right person for the job. Whether you have been granted interviews will matter, because the district manager will wonder why you didn’t gain the position if you interviewed. On the other hand, if you didn’t gain an interview that means you failed the first sales test. Perhaps you turned a position down because of location. That’s a good reason to decline. If you’ve just started looking for a pharmaceutical sales position and you’ve already gained interviews, it’s because you are impressive, on paper and in person.

1. How does your current or former job experience compare to pharmaceutical sales?
2. What was your rating on your last Performance Management Review?
3. How would you describe “selling?”
4. Name five reasons why you believe you would be a good pharmaceutical sales representative.
5. Have you interviewed with other companies?
6. How do you feel about working on your own most of the time?
7. Why should we hire you over other candidates?