PHP Interview Question

1. Which of the following will not add john to the users array?
2. What’s the difference between sort(), assort() and ksort? Under what circumstances would you use each of these?
3. What would the following code print to the browser? Why?
4. What is the difference between a reference and a regular variable? How do you pass by reference & why would you want to?
5. What functions can you use to add library code to the currently running script?
6. What is the difference between foo() & @foo()?
7. How do you debug a PHP application?
8. What does === do? What’s an example of something that will give true for ‘==’, but not ‘===’?
9. How would you declare a class named “myclass” with no methods or properties?
10. How would you create an object, which is an instance of “myclass”?
11. How do you access and set properties of a class from within the class?
12. What is the difference between include & include_once? include & require?
13. What function would you use to redirect the browser to a new page?
14. What function can you use to open a file for reading and writing?
15. What’s the difference between mysql_fetch_row() and mysql_fetch_array()?
16. What does the following code do? Explain what’s going on there.
17. Given a line of text $string, how would you write a regular expression to strip all the HTML tags from it?
18. What’s the difference between the way PHP and Perl distinguish between arrays and hashes?
19. How can you get round the stateless nature of HTTP using PHP?
20. What does the GD library do?
21. Name a few ways to output (print) a block of HTML code in PHP?
22. Is PHP better than Perl? – Discuss.

.NET XML Question

1. What is the use of XML Namespaces?
2. When is the DOM appropriate for use? When is it not? there is any size limitations?
3. What is the WS-I Basic Profile?
5. What is the fundamental difference between Elements and Attributes?
6. What is the difference between Well-Formed XML and Valid XML?
7. How would you validate XML using .NET?
9. Describe the difference between pull-style parsers (XmlReader) and eventing-readers (Sax)
10. What is the difference between XPathDocument and XmlDocument?
11. What is the difference between an XML "Fragment" and an XML "Document."
12. What does it meant to say “the canonical” form of XML?
13. Why is the XML InfoSet specification different from the Xml DOM? What does the InfoSet attempt to solve?
14. Contrast DTDs versus XSDs. What are their similarities and differences? Which is preferred and why?
15. Does System.Xml support DTDs?
16. Can any XML Schema be represented as an object graph? Vice versa?

.NET C# OOPS

What is the syntax to inherit from a class in C#?

Place a colon and then the name of the base class.
Example: class MyNewClass : MyBaseClass

Can you prevent your class from being inherited by another class?
Yes. The keyword “sealed” will prevent the class from being inherited.

Can you allow a class to be inherited, but prevent the method from being over-ridden?

Yes. Just leave the class public and make the method sealed.

What’s an abstract class?
A class that cannot be instantiated. An abstract class is a class that must be inherited and have the methods overridden. An abstract class is essentially a blueprint for a class without any implementation.

When do you absolutely have to declare a class as abstract?
1. When the class itself is inherited from an abstract class, but not all base abstract methods have been overridden.
2. When at least one of the methods in the class is abstract.

What is an interface class?

Interfaces, like classes, define a set of properties, methods, and events. But unlike classes, interfaces do not provide implementation. They are implemented by classes, and defined as separate entities from classes.

Why can’t you specify the accessibility modifier for methods inside the interface?
They all must be public, and are therefore public by default.

Can you inherit multiple interfaces?

Yes. .NET does support multiple interfaces.

What happens if you inherit multiple interfaces and they have conflicting method names?

It’s up to you to implement the method inside your own class, so implementation is left entirely up to you. This might cause a problem on a higher-level scale if similarly named methods from different interfaces expect different data, but as far as compiler cares you’re okay.
To Do: Investigate

What’s the difference between an interface and abstract class?
In an interface class, all methods are abstract - there is no implementation. In an abstract class some methods can be concrete. In an interface class, no accessibility modifiers are allowed. An abstract class may have accessibility modifiers.

What is the difference between a Struct and a Class?
Structs are value-type variables and are thus saved on the stack, additional overhead but faster retrieval. Another difference is that structs cannot inherit.

.NET Assembly Questions & Answer

How is the DLL Hell problem solved in .NET?
Assembly versioning allows the application to specify not only the library it needs to run (which was available under Win32), but also the version of the assembly.

What are the ways to deploy an assembly?
An MSI installer, a CAB archive, and XCOPY command.

What is a satellite assembly?
When you write a multilingual or multi-cultural application in .NET, and want to distribute the core application separately from the localized modules, the localized assemblies that modify the core application are called satellite assemblies.

What namespaces are necessary to create a localized application?

System.Globalization and System.Resources.

What is the smallest unit of execution in .NET?
an Assembly.

When should you call the garbage collector in .NET?

As a good rule, you should not call the garbage collector. However, you could call the garbage collector when you are done using a large object (or set of objects) to force the garbage collector to dispose of those very large objects from memory. However, this is usually not a good practice.

How do you convert a value-type to a reference-type?
Use Boxing.

What happens in memory when you Box and Unbox a value-type?
Boxing converts a value-type to a reference-type, thus storing the object on the heap. Unboxing converts a reference-type to a value-type, thus storing the value on the stack.

ADO.NET Question & Answer

What is the role of the DataReader class in ADO.NET connections?

It returns a read-only, forward-only rowset from the data source. A DataReader provides fast access when a forward-only sequential read is needed.

What are advantages and disadvantages of Microsoft-provided data provider classes in ADO.NET?

SQLServer.NET data provider is high-speed and robust, but requires SQL Server license purchased from Microsoft. OLE-DB.NET is universal for accessing other sources, like Oracle, DB2, Microsoft Access and Informix. OLE-DB.NET is a .NET layer on top of the OLE layer, so it’s not as fastest and efficient as SqlServer.NET.

What is the wildcard character in SQL?
Let’s say you want to query database with LIKE for all employees whose name starts with La. The wildcard character is %, the proper query with LIKE would involve ‘La%’.

Explain ACID rule of thumb for transactions.
A transaction must be:
1. Atomic - it is one unit of work and does not dependent on previous and following transactions.
2. Consistent - data is either committed or roll back, no “in-between” case where something has been updated and something hasn’t.
3. Isolated - no transaction sees the intermediate results of the current transaction).
4. Durable - the values persist if the data had been committed even if the system crashes right after.

What connections does Microsoft SQL Server support?
Windows Authentication (via Active Directory) and SQL Server authentication (via Microsoft SQL Server username and password).

Between Windows Authentication and SQL Server Authentication, which one is trusted and which one is untrusted?
Windows Authentication is trusted because the username and password are checked with the Active Directory, the SQL Server authentication is untrusted, since SQL Server is the only verifier participating in the transaction.

What does the Initial Catalog parameter define in the connection string?
The database name to connect to.

What does the Dispose method do with the connection object?
Deletes it from the memory.
To Do: answer better. The current answer is not entirely correct.

What is a pre-requisite for connection pooling?
Multiple processes must agree that they will share the same connection, where every parameter is the same, including the security settings. The connection string must be identical.