J2EE interview FAQs

What is "application client" ?
A first-tier J2EE client component that executes in its own Java virtual machine. Application clients have access to some J2EE platform APIs.

What is "application client container" ?
A container that supports application client components.

What is "application client module" ?
A software unit that consists of one or more classes and an application client deployment descriptor.

What is "application component provider" ?
A vendor that provides the Java classes that implement components' methods, JSP page definitions, and any required deployment descriptors.

What is "application configuration resource file" ?
An XML file used to configure resources for a Java Server Faces application, to define navigation rules for the application, and to register converters, Validator, listeners, renders, and components with the application.

What is "archiving" ?
The process of saving the state of an object and restoring it.

What is "asant" ?
A Java-based build tool that can be extended using Java classes. The configuration files are XML-based, calling out a target tree where various tasks get executed.

What is "attribute"?
A qualifier on an XML tag that provides additional information.

What is authentication ?
The process that verifies the identity of a user, device, or other entity in a computer system, usually as a prerequisite to allowing access to resources in a system. The Java servlet specification requires three types of authentication-basic, form-based, and mutual-and supports digest authentication.

What is authorization ?
The process by which access to a method or resource is determined. Authorization depends on the determination of whether the principal associated with a request through authentication is in a given security role. A security role is a logical grouping of users defined by the person who assembles the application. A deployer maps security roles to security identities. Security identities may be principals or groups in the operational environment.

What is authorization constraint ?
An authorization rule that determines who is permitted to access a Web resource collection.

What is B2B ?
B2B stands for Business-to-business.

What is backing bean ?
A JavaBeans component that corresponds to a JSP page that includes JavaServer Faces components. The backing bean defines properties for the components on the page and methods that perform processing for the component. This processing includes event handling, validation, and processing associated with navigation.

What is basic authentication ?
An authentication mechanism in which a Web server authenticates an entity via a user name and password obtained using the Web application's
built-in authentication mechanism.

What is bean-managed persistence ?
The mechanism whereby data transfer between an entity bean's variables and a resource manager is managed by the entity bean.

What is bean-managed transaction ?
A transaction whose boundaries are defined by an enterprise bean.
What is binding (XML) ?
Generating the code needed to process a well-defined portion of XML data.

What is binding (JavaServer Faces technology) ?
Wiring UI components to back-end data sources such as backing bean properties.

What is build file ?
The XML file that contains one or more asant targets. A target is a set of tasks you want to be executed. When starting asant, you can select which targets you want to have executed. When no target is given, the project's default target is executed.

What is business logic ?
The code that implements the functionality of an application. In the Enterprise JavaBeans architecture, this logic is implemented by the methods of an enterprise bean.

What is business method ?
A method of an enterprise bean that implements the business logic or rules of an application.

What is callback methods ?
Component methods called by the container to notify the component of important events in its life cycle.

What is caller ?
Same as caller principal.

What is caller principal ?
The principal that identifies the invoker of the enterprise bean method.

What is J2EE?
J2EE is an environment for developing and deploying enterprise applications. The J2EE platform consists of a set of services, application programming interfaces (APIs), and protocols that provide the functionality for developing multitier, web-based applications.

What is the J2EE module?
A J2EE module consists of one or more J2EE components for the same container type and one component deployment descriptor of that type.

What are the components of J2EE application?
A J2EE component is a self-contained functional software unit that is assembled into a J2EE application with its related classes and files and communicates with other components. The J2EE specification defines the following J2EE components:
Application clients and applets are client components.
Java Servlet and JavaServer PagesTM (JSPTM) technology components are web components.
Enterprise JavaBeansTM (EJBTM) components (enterprise beans) are business components.
Resource adapter components provided by EIS and tool vendors.

What are the four types of J2EE modules?
1. Application client module
2. Web module
3. Enterprise JavaBeans module
4. Resource adapter module

What does application client module contain?
A: The application client module contains:
--class files,
--an application client deployment descriptor.
Application client modules are packaged as JAR files with a .jar extension.

What does web module contain?
A: The web module contains:
--JSP files,
--class files for servlets,
--GIF and HTML files, and
--a Web deployment descriptor.
Web modules are packaged as JAR files with a .war (Web ARchive) extension.

What are the differences between Ear, Jar and War files? Under what circumstances should we use each one?
There are no structural differences between the files; they are all archived using zip-jar compression. However, they are intended for different purposes.
--Jar files (files with a .jar extension) are intended to hold generic libraries of Java classes, resources, auxiliary files, etc.
--War files (files with a .war extension) are intended to contain complete Web applications. In this context, a Web application is defined as a single group of files, classes, resources, .jar files that can be packaged and accessed as one servlet context.
--Ear files (files with a .ear extension) are intended to contain complete enterprise applications. In this context, an enterprise application is defined as a collection of .jar files, resources, classes, and multiple Web applications.
Each type of file (.jar, .war, .ear) is processed uniquely by application servers, servlet containers, EJB containers, etc.

What is the difference between Session bean and Entity bean ?
A: The Session bean and Entity bean are two main parts of EJB container.
Session Bean
--represents a workflow on behalf of a client
--one-to-one logical mapping to a client.
--created and destroyed by a client
--not permanent objects
--lives its EJB container(generally) does not survive system shut down
--two types: stateless and stateful beans
Entity Bean
--represents persistent data and behavior of this data
--can be shared among multiple clients
--persists across multiple invocations
--findable permanent objects
--outlives its EJB container, survives system shutdown
--two types: container managed persistence(CMP) and bean managed persistence(BMP)

What is "applet" ?
A J2EE component that typically executes in a Web browser but can execute in a variety of other applications or devices that support the applet programming model.

# What is "applet container" ?
A container that includes support for the applet programming model.

# What is "application assembler" ?
A person who combines J2EE components and modules into deployable application units.

Struts FAQs

Question: Can I setup Apache Struts to use multiple configuration files?
Answer: Yes Struts can use multiple configuration files. Here is the configuration example:

banking
org.apache.struts.action.ActionServlet


config
/WEB-INF/struts-config.xml,
/WEB-INF/struts-authentication.xml,
/WEB-INF/struts-help.xml


1


Question: What are the disadvantages of Struts?
Answer: Struts is very robust framework and is being used extensively in the industry. But there are some disadvantages of the Struts:
a) High Learning Curve
Struts requires lot of efforts to learn and master it. For any small project less experience developers could spend more time on learning the Struts.

b) Harder to learn
Struts are harder to learn, benchmark and optimize.

Question: What is Struts Flow?
Answer: Struts Flow is a port of Cocoon's Control Flow to Struts to allow complex workflow, like multi-form wizards, to be easily implemented using continuations-capable JavaScript. It provides the ability to describe the order of Web pages that have to be sent to the client, at any given point in time in an application. The code is based on a proof-of-concept Dave Johnson put together to show how the Control Flow could be extracted from Cocoon. (Ref: http://struts.sourceforge.net/struts-flow/index.html )

Question: What are the difference between and ?
Answer: : This tag is used to output locale-specific text (from the properties files) from a MessageResources bundle.

: This tag is used to output property values from a bean. is a commonly used tag which enables the programmers to easily present the data.

Question: What is LookupDispatchAction?
Answer: An abstract Action that dispatches to the subclass mapped execute method. This is useful in cases where an HTML form has multiple submit buttons with the same name. The button name is specified by the parameter property of the corresponding ActionMapping. (Ref. http://struts.apache.org/1.2.7/api/org/apache/struts/actions/LookupDispatchAction.html).

Question: What are the components of Struts?
Answer: Struts is based on the MVC design pattern. Struts components can be categories into Model, View and Controller.
Model: Components like business logic / business processes and data are the part of Model.
View: JSP, HTML etc. are part of View
Controller: Action Servlet of Struts is part of Controller components which works as front controller to handle all the requests.

Question: What are Tag Libraries provided with Struts?
Answer: Struts provides a number of tag libraries that helps to create view components easily. These tag libraries are:
a) Bean Tags: Bean Tags are used to access the beans and their properties.
b) HTML Tags: HTML Tags provides tags for creating the view components like forms, buttons, etc..
c) Logic Tags: Logic Tags provides presentation logics that eliminate the need for scriptlets.
d) Nested Tags: Nested Tags helps to work with the nested context.

Question: What are the core classes of the Struts Framework?
Answer: Core classes of Struts Framework are ActionForm, Action, ActionMapping, ActionForward, ActionServlet etc.

Question: What are difference between ActionErrors and ActionMessage?
Answer: ActionMessage: A class that encapsulates messages. Messages can be either global or they are specific to a particular bean property.
Each individual message is described by an ActionMessage object, which contains a message key (to be looked up in an appropriate message resources database), and up to four placeholder arguments used for parametric substitution in the resulting message.

ActionErrors: A class that encapsulates the error messages being reported by the validate() method of an ActionForm. Validation errors are either global to the entire ActionForm bean they are associated with, or they are specific to a particular bean property (and, therefore, a particular input field on the corresponding form).

Question: How you will handle exceptions in Struts?
Answer: In Struts you can handle the exceptions in two ways:
a) Declarative Exception Handling: You can either define global exception handling tags in your struts-config.xml or define the exception handling tags within .. tag.
Example:


key="database.error.duplicate"

path="/UserExists.jsp"

type="mybank.account.DuplicateUserException"/>

b) Programmatic Exception Handling: Here you can use try{}catch{} block to handle the exception.

Important Struts interview FAQs

Question: What is RequestProcessor and RequestDispatcher?
Answer: The controller is responsible for intercepting and translating user input into actions to be performed by the model. The controller is responsible for selecting the next view based on user input and the outcome of model operations. The Controller receives the request from the browser, invoke a business operation and coordinating the view to return to the client.

The controller is implemented by a java servlet, this servlet is centralized point of control for the web application. In struts framework the controller responsibilities are implemented by several different components like
The ActionServlet Class
The RequestProcessor Class
The Action Class

The ActionServlet extends the javax.servlet.http.httpServlet class. The ActionServlet class is not abstract and therefore can be used as a concrete controller by your application.
The controller is implemented by the ActionServlet class. All incoming requests are mapped to the central controller in the deployment descriptor as follows.

action
org.apache.struts.action.ActionServlet



All request URIs with the pattern *.do are mapped to this servlet in the deployment descriptor as follows.


action
*.do
*.do
A request URI that matches this pattern will have the following form.
http://www.my_site_name.com/mycontext/actionName.do

The preceding mapping is called extension mapping, however, you can also specify path mapping where a pattern ends with /* as shown below.

action
/do/*
*.do
A request URI that matches this pattern will have the following form.
http://www.my_site_name.com/mycontext/do/action_Name
The class org.apache.struts.action.requestProcessor process the request from the controller. You can sublass the RequestProcessor with your own version and modify how the request is processed.

Once the controller receives a client request, it delegates the handling of the request to a helper class. This helper knows how to execute the business operation associated with the requested action. In the Struts framework this helper class is descended of org.apache.struts.action.Action class. It acts as a bridge between a client-side user action and business operation. The Action class decouples the client request from the business model. This decoupling allows for more than one-to-one mapping between the user request and an action. The Action class also can perform other functions such as authorization, logging before invoking business operation. the Struts Action class contains several methods, but most important method is the execute() method.
public ActionForward execute(ActionMapping mapping,
ActionForm form, HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response) throws Exception;
The execute() method is called by the controller when a request is received from a client. The controller creates an instance of the Action class if one doesn’t already exist. The strut framework will create only a single instance of each Action class in your application.

Action are mapped in the struts configuration file and this configuration is loaded into memory at startup and made available to the framework at runtime. Each Action element is represented in memory by an instance of the org.apache.struts.action.ActionMapping class . The ActionMapping object contains a path attribute that is matched against a portion of the URI of the incoming request.

path= "/somerequest"
type="com.somepackage.someAction"
scope="request"
name="someForm"
validate="true"
input="somejsp.jsp"



Once this is done the controller should determine which view to return to the client. The execute method signature in Action class has a return type org.apache.struts.action.ActionForward class. The ActionForward class represents a destination to which the controller may send control once an action has completed. Instead of specifying an actual JSP page in the code, you can declaratively associate as action forward through out the application. The action forward are specified in the configuration file.

path= "/somerequest"
type="com.somepackage.someAction"
scope="request"
name="someForm"
validate="true"
input="somejsp.jsp"



The action forward mappings also can be specified in a global section, independent of any specific action mapping.





public interface RequestDispatcher

Defines an object that receives requests from the client and sends them to any resource (such as a servlet, HTML file, or JSP file) on the server. The servlet container creates the RequestDispatcher object, which is used as a wrapper around a server resource located at a particular path or given by a particular name.
This interface is intended to wrap servlets, but a servlet container can create RequestDispatcher objects to wrap any type of resource.

getRequestDispatcher

public RequestDispatcher getRequestDispatcher(java.lang.String path)

Returns a RequestDispatcher object that acts as a wrapper for the resource located at the given path. A RequestDispatcher object can be used to forward a request to the resource or to include the resource in a response. The resource can be dynamic or static.
The pathname must begin with a "/" and is interpreted as relative to the current context root. Use getContext to obtain a RequestDispatcher for resources in foreign contexts. This method returns null if the ServletContext cannot return a RequestDispatcher.

Parameters:
path - a String specifying the pathname to the resource
Returns:
a RequestDispatcher object that acts as a wrapper for the resource at the specified path
See Also:
RequestDispatcher, getContext(java.lang.String)

getNamedDispatcher

public RequestDispatcher getNamedDispatcher(java.lang.String name)

Returns a RequestDispatcher object that acts as a wrapper for the named servlet.
Servlets (and JSP pages also) may be given names via server administration or via a web application deployment descriptor. A servlet instance can determine its name using ServletConfig.getServletName().
This method returns null if the ServletContext cannot return a RequestDispatcher for any reason.

Parameters:
name - a String specifying the name of a servlet to wrap
Returns:
a RequestDispatcher object that acts as a wrapper for the named servlet
See Also:
RequestDispatcher, getContext(java.lang.String), ServletConfig.getServletName()

Question: Why cant we overide create method in StatelessSessionBean?
Answer: From the EJB Spec : - A Session bean's home interface defines one or morecreate(...) methods. Each create method must be named create and must match one of the ejbCreate methods defined in the enterprise Bean class. The return type of a create method must be the enterprise Bean's remote interface type. The home interface of a stateless session bean must have one create method that takes no arguments.


Question: Is struts threadsafe?Give an example?
Answer: Struts is not only thread-safe but thread-dependant. The response to a request is handled by a light-weight Action object, rather than an individual servlet. Struts instantiates each Action class once, and allows other requests to be threaded through the original object. This core strategy conserves resources and provides the best possible throughput. A properly-designed application will exploit this further by routing related operations through a single Action.


Question: Can we Serialize static variable?
Answer: Serialization is the process of converting a set of object instances that contain references to each other into a linear stream of bytes, which can then be sent through a socket, stored to a file, or simply manipulated as a stream of data. Serialization is the mechanism used by RMI to pass objects between JVMs, either as arguments in a method invocation from a client to a server or as return values from a method invocation. In the first section of this book, There are three exceptions in which serialization doesnot necessarily read and write to the stream. These are
1. Serialization ignores static fields, because they are not part of any particular object's state.
2. Base class fields are only handled if the base class itself is serializable.
3. Transient fields. There are four basic things you must do when you are making a class serializable. They are:

1. Implement the Serializable interface.
2. Make sure that instance-level, locally defined state is serialized properly.
3. Make sure that superclass state is serialized properly.
4. Override equals( )and hashCode( ).
it is possible to have control over serialization process. The class should implement Externalizable interface. This interface contains two methods namely readExternal and writeExternal. You should implement these methods and write the logic for customizing the serialization process .... (Source: http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/javarmi/chapter/ch10.html)


Question: What are the uses of tiles-def.xml file, resourcebundle.properties file, validation.xml file?
Answer: tiles-def.xml is is an xml file used to configure tiles with the struts application. You can define the layout / header / footer / body content for your View. See more at http://www.roseindia.net/struts/using-tiles-defs-xml.shtml.

The resourcebundle.properties file is used to configure the message (error/ other messages) for the struts applications.

The file validation.xml is used to declare sets of validations that should be applied to Form Beans. Fpr more information please visit http://www.roseindia.net/struts/address_struts_validator.shtml.


Question: What is the difference between perform() and execute() methods?
Answer: Perform method is the method which was deprecated in the Struts Version 1.1. In Struts 1.x, Action.perform() is the method called by the ActionServlet. This is typically where your business logic resides, or at least the flow control to your JavaBeans and EJBs that handle your business logic. As we already mentioned, to support declarative exception handling, the method signature changed in perform. Now execute just throws Exception. Action.perform() is now deprecated; however, the Struts v1.1 ActionServlet is smart enough to know whether or not it should call perform or execute in the Action, depending on which one is available.


Question: What are the various Struts tag libraries?
Answer: Struts is very rich framework and it provides very good and user friendly way to develop web application forms. Struts provide many tag libraries to ease the development of web applications. These tag libraries are:
* Bean tag library - Tags for accessing JavaBeans and their properties.
* HTML tag library - Tags to output standard HTML, including forms, text boxes, checkboxes, radio buttons etc..
* Logic tag library - Tags for generating conditional output, iteration capabilities and flow management
* Tiles or Template tag library - For the application using tiles
* Nested tag library - For using the nested beans in the application


Question: What do you understand by DispatchAction?
Answer: DispatchAction is an action that comes with Struts 1.1 or later, that lets you combine Struts actions into one class, each with their own method. The org.apache.struts.action.DispatchAction class allows multiple operation to mapped to the different functions in the same Action class.
For example:
A package might include separate RegCreate, RegSave, and RegDelete Actions, which just perform different operations on the same RegBean object. Since all of these operations are usually handled by the same JSP page, it would be handy to also have them handled by the same Struts Action.

A very simple way to do this is to have the submit button modify a field in the form which indicates which operation to perform.



SAVE
SAVE AS NEW
DELETE

Then, in the Action you can setup different methods to handle the different operations, and branch to one or the other depending on which value is passed in the dispatch field.

String dispatch = myForm.getDispatch();
if ("create".equals(dispatch)) { ...
if ("save".equals(dispatch)) { ...

The Struts Dispatch Action [org.apache.struts.actions] is designed to do exactly the same thing, but without messy branching logic. The base perform method will check a dispatch field for you, and invoke the indicated method. The only catch is that the dispatch methods must use the same signature as perform. This is a very modest requirement, since in practice you usually end up doing that anyway.

To convert an Action that was switching on a dispatch field to a DispatchAction, you simply need to create methods like this

public ActionForward create(
ActionMapping mapping,
ActionForm form,
HttpServletRequest request,
HttpServletResponse response)
throws IOException, ServletException { ...

public ActionForward save(
ActionMapping mapping,
ActionForm form,
HttpServletRequest request,
HttpServletResponse response)
throws IOException, ServletException { ...

Cool. But do you have to use a property named dispatch? No, you don't. The only other step is to specify the name of of the dispatch property as the "parameter" property of the action-mapping. So a mapping for our example might look like this:

path="/reg/dispatch"
type="app.reg.RegDispatch"
name="regForm"
scope="request"
validate="true"
parameter="dispatch"/>

If you wanted to use the property "o" instead, as in o=create, you would change the mapping to

path="/reg/dispatch"
type="app.reg.RegDispatch"
name="regForm"
scope="request"
validate="true"
parameter="o"/>

Again, very cool. But why use a JavaScript button in the first place? Why not use several buttons named "dispatch" and use a different value for each?

You can, but the value of the button is also its label. This means if the page designers want to label the button something different, they have to coordinate the Action programmer. Localization becomes virtually impossible. (Source: http://husted.com/struts/tips/002.html).


Question: How Struts relates to J2EE?
Answer: Struts framework is built on J2EE technologies (JSP, Servlet, Taglibs), but it is itself not part of the J2EE standard.


Question: What is Struts actions and action mappings?
Answer: A Struts action is an instance of a subclass of an Action class, which implements a portion of a Web application and whose perform or execute method returns a forward.

An action can perform tasks such as validating a user name and password.

An action mapping is a configuration file entry that, in general, associates an action name with an action. An action mapping can contain a reference to a form bean that the action can use, and can additionally define a list of local forwards that is visible only to this action.

An action servlet is a servlet that is started by the servlet container of a Web server to process a request that invokes an action. The servlet receives a forward from the action and asks the servlet container to pass the request to the forward's URL. An action servlet must be an instance of an org.apache.struts.action.ActionServlet class or of a subclass of that class. An action servlet is the primary component of the controller.

struts interview FAQs

Q: What is ActionServlet?
A: The class org.apache.struts.action.ActionServlet is the called the ActionServlet. In the the Jakarta Struts Framework this class plays the role of controller. All the requests to the server goes through the controller. Controller is responsible for handling all the requests.

Q: How you will make available any Message Resources Definitions file to the Struts Framework Environment?
A: Message Resources Definitions file are simple .properties files and these files contains the messages that can be used in the struts project. Message Resources Definitions files can be added to the struts-config.xml file through tag.
Example:


Q: What is Action Class?
A: The Action is part of the controller. The purpose of Action Class is to translate the HttpServletRequest to the business logic. To use the Action, we need to Subclass and overwrite the execute() method. The ActionServlet (commad) passes the parameterized class to Action Form using the execute() method. There should be no database interactions in the action. The action should receive the request, call business objects (which then handle database, or interface with J2EE, etc) and then determine where to go next. Even better, the business objects could be handed to the action at runtime (IoC style) thus removing any dependencies on the model. The return type of the execute method is ActionForward which is used by the Struts Framework to forward the request to the file as per the value of the returned ActionForward object.
Q: What is ActionForm?
A: An ActionForm is a JavaBean that extends org.apache.struts.action.ActionForm. ActionForm maintains the session state for web application and the ActionForm object is automatically populated on the server side with data entered from a form on the client side.


Q: What is Struts Validator Framework?
A: Struts Framework provides the functionality to validate the form data. It can be use to validate the data on the users browser as well as on the server side. Struts Framework emits the java scripts and it can be used validate the form data on the client browser. Server side validation of form can be accomplished by sub classing your From Bean with DynaValidatorForm class.

The Validator framework was developed by David Winterfeldt as third-party add-on to Struts. Now the Validator framework is a part of Jakarta Commons project and it can be used with or without Struts. The Validator framework comes integrated with the Struts Framework and can be used without doing any extra settings.


Q. Give the Details of XML files used in Validator Framework?
A: The Validator Framework uses two XML configuration files validator-rules.xml and validation.xml. The validator-rules.xml defines the standard validation routines, these are reusable and used in validation.xml. to define the form specific validations. The validation.xml defines the validations applied to a form bean.

Q. How you will display validation fail errors on jsp page?
A: Following tag displays all the errors:



Q. How you will enable front-end validation based on the xml in validation.xml?
A: The tag to allow front-end validation based on the xml in validation.xml. For example the code: generates the client side java script for the form "logonForm" as defined in the validation.xml file. The when added in the jsp file generates the client site validation script.

Java core interview FAQs

Question: When you declare a method as abstract method ?

Answer: When i want child class to implement the behavior of the method.

Question: Can I call a abstract method from a non abstract method ?

Answer: Yes, We can call a abstract method from a Non abstract method in a Java abstract class

Question: What is the difference between an Abstract class and Interface in Java ? or can you explain when you use Abstract classes ?

Answer: Abstract classes let you define some behaviors; they force your subclasses to provide others. These abstract classes will provide the basic funcationality of your applicatoin, child class which inherited this class will provide the funtionality of the abstract methods in abstract class. When base class calls this method, Java calls the method defined by the child class.

* An Interface can only declare constants and instance methods, but cannot implement default behavior.
* Interfaces provide a form of multiple inheritance. A class can extend only one other class.
* Interfaces are limited to public methods and constants with no implementation. Abstract classes can have a partial implementation, protected parts, static methods, etc.
* A Class may implement several interfaces. But in case of abstract class, a class may extend only one abstract class.
* Interfaces are slow as it requires extra indirection to find corresponding method in the actual class. Abstract classes are fast.

Question: What is user-defined exception in java ?

Answer: User-defined expections are the exceptions defined by the application developer which are errors related to specific application. Application Developer can define the user defined exception by inherite the Exception class as shown below. Using this class we can throw new exceptions.
Java Example : public class noFundException extends Exception { } Throw an exception using a throw statement: public class Fund { ... public Object getFunds() throws noFundException { if (Empty()) throw new noFundException(); ... } } User-defined exceptions should usually be checked.

Question: Does it matter in what order catch statements for FileNotFoundException and IOExceptipon are written?

Answer: Yes, it does. The FileNoFoundException is inherited from the IOException. Exception's subclasses have to be caught first.

Question: Can an inner class declared inside of a method access local variables of this method?

Answer: It's possible if these variables are final.

Question: What can go wrong if you replace && with & in the following code: String a=null; if (a!=null && a.length()>10) {...}

Answer: A single ampersand here would lead to a NullPointerException.

Question: What's the main difference between a Vector and an ArrayList

Answer: Java Vector class is internally synchronized and ArrayList is not.

Question: When should the method invokeLater()be used?

Answer: This method is used to ensure that Swing components are updated through the event-dispatching thread.

Question: How can a subclass call a method or a constructor defined in a superclass?

Answer: Use the following syntax: super.myMethod(); To call a constructor of the superclass, just write super(); in the first line of the subclass's constructor.

For senior-level developers:

Question: What's the difference between a queue and a stack?

Answer: Stacks works by last-in-first-out rule (LIFO), while queues use the FIFO rule

Question: You can create an abstract class that contains only abstract methods. On the other hand, you can create an interface that declares the same methods. So can you use abstract classes instead of interfaces?

Answer: Sometimes. But your class may be a descendent of another class and in this case the interface is your only option.

Question: What comes to mind when you hear about a young generation in Java?

Answer: Garbage collection.

Question: What comes to mind when someone mentions a shallow copy in Java?

Answer: Object cloning.

Question: If you're overriding the method equals() of an object, which other method you might also consider?

Answer: hashCode()

Question: You are planning to do an indexed search in a list of objects. Which of the two Java collections should you use: ArrayList or LinkedList?

Answer: ArrayList

Question: How would you make a copy of an entire Java object with its state?

Answer: Have this class implement Cloneable interface and call its method clone().

Question: How can you minimize the need of garbage collection and make the memory use more effective?

Answer: Use object pooling and weak object references.

Question: There are two classes: A and B. The class B need to inform a class A when some important event has happened. What Java technique would you use to implement it?

Answer: If these classes are threads I'd consider notify() or notifyAll(). For regular classes you can use the Observer interface.

Question: What access level do you need to specify in the class declaration to ensure that only classes from the same directory can access it?
Answer: You do not need to specify any access level, and Java will use a default package access level .

Java Basics interview questions

Question: How could Java classes direct program messages to the system console, but error messages, say to a file?

Answer: The class System has a variable out that represents the standard output, and the variable err that represents the standard error device. By default, they both point at the system console. This how the standard output could be re-directed:

Stream st = new Stream(new FileOutputStream("output.txt")); System.setErr(st); System.setOut(st);

Question: What's the difference between an interface and an abstract class?

Answer: An abstract class may contain code in method bodies, which is not allowed in an interface. With abstract classes, you have to inherit your class from it and Java does not allow multiple inheritance. On the other hand, you can implement multiple interfaces in your class.

Question: Why would you use a synchronized block vs. synchronized method?

Answer: Synchronized blocks place locks for shorter periods than synchronized methods.

Question: Explain the usage of the keyword transient?

Answer: This keyword indicates that the value of this member variable does not have to be serialized with the object. When the class will be de-serialized, this variable will be initialized with a default value of its data type (i.e. zero for integers).

Question: How can you force garbage collection?

Answer: You can't force GC, but could request it by calling System.gc(). JVM does not guarantee that GC will be started immediately.

Question: How do you know if an explicit object casting is needed?

Answer: If you assign a superclass object to a variable of a subclass's data type, you need to do explicit casting. For example:

Object a; Customer b; b = (Customer) a;

When you assign a subclass to a variable having a supeclass type, the casting is performed automatically.

Question: What's the difference between the methods sleep() and wait()

Answer: The code sleep(1000); puts thread aside for exactly one second. The code wait(1000), causes a wait of up to one second. A thread could stop waiting earlier if it receives the notify() or notifyAll() call. The method wait() is defined in the class Object and the method sleep() is defined in the class Thread.

Question: Can you write a Java class that could be used both as an applet as well as an application?

Answer: Yes. Add a main() method to the applet.

Question: What's the difference between constructors and other methods?

Answer: Constructors must have the same name as the class and can not return a value. They are only called once while regular methods could be called many times.

Question: Can you call one constructor from another if a class has multiple constructors

Answer: Yes. Use this() syntax.

Question: Explain the usage of Java packages.

Answer: This is a way to organize files when a project consists of multiple modules. It also helps resolve naming conflicts when different packages have classes with the same names. Packages access level also allows you to protect data from being used by the non-authorized classes.

Question: If a class is located in a package, what do you need to change in the OS environment to be able to use it?

Answer: You need to add a directory or a jar file that contains the package directories to the CLASSPATH environment variable. Let's say a class Employee belongs to a package com.xyz.hr; and is located in the file c:\dev\com\xyz\hr\Employee.java. In this case, you'd need to add c:\dev to the variable CLASSPATH. If this class contains the method main(), you could test it from a command prompt window as follows:

c:\>java com.xyz.hr.Employee

Question: What's the difference between J2SDK 1.5 and J2SDK 5.0?

Answer: There's no difference, Sun Microsystems just re-branded this version.

Question: What would you use to compare two String variables - the operator == or the method equals()?
Answer: I'd use the method equals() to compare the values of the Strings and the == to check if two variables point at the same instance of a String object.

Jboss interview Questions

Q:What's the difference between Hibernate and EJB 3 ? Don't you think EJB 3 is just a clone of Hibernate ?

The perception of EJB3 as being a simple clone of Hibernate is primarily based on developer familiarity with Hibernate and a similarity of naming, as well as common purpose, and that Hibernate is morphing itself into an EJB3 implementation based on the work going into the specification, not the other way around.

EJBs are supposed to be components, in the sense that they're not just one class, but a set of classes, descriptors and usage and management contracts. All of this in order to allow a container (JBoss,
Weblogic, etc.) to provide services to those components, and to be able to reuse and distribute this components. This services are, among others, transactions, concurrent access control, security, instance pooling, etcetera.
Hibernat is "just" an ORM (Object/Relational Mapping) tool. Quick and dirty, this means you can store an object tree belonging to an class hierarchy in a relational DB without writing a single SQL query. Quite cool, IMO. But no transaction control, no instance pooling, no concurrency control, and certainly no security.

Q:Which Hibernate object wraps the JDBC Connection ?

The Session interface wraps a JDBC Connection. This interface is a single threaded object which represents a single unit of work with application and persistent database. It's retrieved by the SessionFactory's openSession() method

Q:Ok, is the Session Factory Thread safe?

Yes: that is many threads can access it cuncurrentely and request for sessions. It holds cached data that has been read in one unit of work and may be reused in a future unit of work. Good practice is to create it when the application is initialized.
Q:How can you start a JTA transaction from a Servlet deployed on JBoss ?

JBoss registers in the JNDI tree a JTA UserTransaction Object which can be user to manage a distributed transaction.

Q:What if you need to span your transaction across multiple Servlet invocations ?
You can't with a Servlet. A JTA transaction must start and finish within a single invocation (of the service() method). You should consider using a Stateful SB. In a SFSB with a JTA transaction, the association between the bean instance and the transaction is retained across multiple client calls.
Q:What are the differences between EJB 3.0 and EJB 2.0 ?

EJBs are now plain old Java objects (POJO) that expose regular business interfaces (POJI), and there is no requirement for home interfaces.

* Use of metadata annotations, an extensible, metadata-driven, attribute-oriented framework that is used to generate Java code or XML deployment descriptors.
* Removal of the requirement for specific interfaces and deployment descriptors (deployment descriptor information can be replaced by annotations).
* Interceptor facility to invoke user methods at the invocation of business methods or at life cycle events.
* Default values are used whenever possible (“configuration by exception” approach).
* Reduction in the requirements for usage of checked exception.
* A complete new persistence model (based on the JPA standard), that supersedes EJB 2.x entity beans

Q:What is the diffrence between a local-tx-datasource and a xa-datasource? can you use transactions in both ?

A local-tx-datasource identifies a data source that uses transactions, even distributed trans-
actions within the local application server, but doesn’t use distributed transactions among multiple application servers. An xa-datasource on the other hand identifies a data source that uses distributed transaction among multi-ple application servers.

Q:What do you need to set-up a cluster with JBoss ?


Basically starting JBoss with the “all” configuration contains everything needed for clustering:
It has all the libraries for clustering:

* JGroups.jar, jboss-cache.jar
* Clustered beans (cluster-service.xml)
* HA-JNDI
* HTTP session replications (tc5-cluster-service.xml)
* Farming
* HA-JMS

Q:What optimization could I use if the EJB container is the only point of write access to the database ?

You could activate the "Commit Option A" that is the container caches entity bean state between transactions. This option assumesthat the container has exclusive access to the persistentstore and therefore it doesn’t need to synchronizethe in-memory bean state from the persistent store at the beginning of each transaction.
Q:Which component handles cluster communication in JBoss ?

The JGroups framework provides services to enable peer-to-peer communications between nodes in a cluster. It is built on top a stack of network communication protocols that provide transport, discovery, reliability and failure detection, and cluster membership management services.

Q:Is it possible to put a JBoss server instance into multiple cluster at the same time ?

It is technically possible to put a JBoss server instance into multiple clusters at the same time, this practice is generally not recommended, as it increases the management complexity.
Q:What's jBoss cache in short ?

JBossCache enables easy distribution of datasets across your computing environments. It is based on JGroups and enables clustering and high availability of that data. You may choose to distribute the data with JBoss Messaging to move it where it is needed for computation or event-based programming

Q:What do you know about Seam ?

Built on the standards JavaServer Faces and EJB 3.0, JBoss Seam unifies component and programming models and delivers a consistent and powerful framework for rapid creation of web applications with Java EE 5.0. Seam simplifies web application development and enables new functionality that was difficult to implement by hand before, such as stateful conversations, multi-window operation, and handling concurrent fine-grained AJAX requests. Seam also unifies and integrates popular open source technologies like Facelets, Hibernate, iText, and Lucene.

Q:Does Seam run on other application servers besides JBoss ?

Seam runs beautifully on other application servers - just like everything else the Hibernate team does, this is not a JBoss-only thing.

Q: Which JDK is needed to run Seam?


Seam only works on JDK 5.0 and above. It uses annotations and other JDK 5.0 features.

Q:How would you convince my IT department to adopt SOA ?

In my opinion one of the biggest obstacle in the movement towards SOA adoption is the organization’s own IT department.Too many people in the IT organization conceive SOA as a technology concept only, and as such think of SOA as just a set of technologies and infrastructure for exposing, securing, running, and managing Services. Put it this way, SOA is nothing more than Web Services and standardized middleware. The critical flaw in thinking is confusing the technology that sits beneath the Services level of abstraction and the mechanism by which Services are accessed with the architectural approach that aims to decouple the implementation from the consumption and focus on sustainable architecture that allows for continuous change.

Successful SOA adoption requires a cultural shift in the way IT is done. The Service-oriented movement to agility and loose coupling demands a shift from traditional, waterfall styles of development (design-build-test-deploy-manage) to iterative approaches to continuous Service modeling

In a Service-oriented environment, governance moves from nice addon to an absolute requirement prior to the developement of the first Service. Security considerations shift from network boundaries to become context-specific, message-driven, and federated. And of course, the modus operandi of IT as a whole moves from focusing on the short-term project management to meeting the long-term sustainable needs of the business as it changes.


Q:What's JBoss JBPM ?

JBoss jBPM is a platform for process languages. At the base there is a java library to define and execute graphs. The actual process constructs like e.g. send email, user task and update database are defined on top of this. Every process language is made up of a set of such process constructs. And that is what is pluggable in this base library. On top of the JBoss jBPM base library, there are implemented several process languages as a set of process constructs: jPDL, BPEL and SEAM pageflow:

* jPDL is a process language with a clean interface to Java and very sophisticated task management capabilities. There is no standard for Java process languages, so it is proprietary.
* BPEL is a service orchestration language. As said before, in BPEL, you can write new services as a function of other services. This is typically a component of an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB).
* SEAM pageflow is a language that allows for the graphically define the navigation between pages in a SEAM web application.


Q:What do you think about BPEL and BPM ? How do they compare?

In my opinion BPEL and BPM are quite different things so they cannot even be compared. The problems boils down to the fact that these years maybe BPEL has been marketed for something which isn't: that is a Business Process Management framework.
BPEL is made up for service orchestration, that is publishing new services as a function of other services.
while BPM si needed for handling human task management functionalities and subprocess management.
Q:How do you monitor JBoss and detect the bottleneck of an application?

The first step is to measure the different components of your app to see where the degradation is. Is it an external resource (database, message server, etc.)? Is it internal? Where is the app spending all its time?
So the first step could be to to use JBoss JMX agents and monitor the components deployed to the application server. Once it's clear which component or library takes most of the time or most of resource you can use a more specialized tool like JProbe and examine the single method or the single objects loaded in memory.
Q:If you have defined a web service that needs to transfer quite a lot of information, how would you do ?

You might consider using an attachment to transfer the information.Jboss JAX-WS Web services provides Attachment support with MTOM (Message Transmission Optimization Mechanism) SOAP.
Q:What's the difference between JAX-WS and JAX-RPC ?

Java API for XML-Based RPC (JAX-RPC) is a Legacy Web Services Java API, it uses SOAP and HTTP to do RPCs over the network and enables building of Web services and Web applications based on the SOAP 1.1 specification, Java SE 1.4 or lower.JAX-WS 2.0 is the successor to JAX-RPC 1.1. JAX-WS still supports SOAP 1.1 over HTTP 1.1, so interoperability will not be affected. However there are lots of differences:

* JAX-WS maps to Java 5.0 and relies on many of the features new in Java 5.0 like Web Service annotations.
* JAX-RPC has its own data mapping model, JAX-WS's data mapping model is JAXB. JAXB promises mappings for all XML schemas.
* JAX-WS introduces message-oriented functionality, dynamic asynchronous functionality which are missing in JAX-RPC.
* JAX-WS also add support, via JAXB, for MTOM, the new attachment specification.

Q:Do you know how you could add support for Web Service transactions ?

JBossTS supports Web Services transactions, including extended transaction models designed specifically for loosely-coupled, long running business processes. J2EE transactions can integrate seamlessly with Web Services transactions using our integrated, bi-directional transaction bridge. Interoperability with many other vendors is provided out-of-the-box and JBoss is an active participant in these standards.

Ruby Core intervew Questions

1. What is the use of load and require in Ruby?
A method that loads and processes the Ruby code from a separate file, including whatever classes, modules, methods, and constants are in that file into the current scope. load is similar, but rather than performing the inclusion operation once, it reprocesses the code every time load is called.
2. How is visibility of methods changed in Ruby?
By applying the access modifier : Public , Private and Protected acces Modifier
3. How is an iterator handled in Ruby?
Iterator is handled using keyword 'each' in ruby.
For example
$no=[1,2,3]
then we can use iterator as
$no.each do |l|
puts l
end
Above prints the values of an array $no which is accomplished using iterator.

4. What is the scope of a local variable in Ruby?
A new scope for a local variable is introduced in the toplevel, a class (module) definition, a method defintion. In a procedure block a new scope is introduced but you can access to a local variable outside the block.
The scope in a block is special because a local variable should be localized in Thread and Proc objects.
while, until, and for are control structures and the scope is shared with the outside of these structures. loop is a method and the appended block introduces a new scope.
5. What are the object-oriented programming features supported by Ruby?
Classes,Objects,Inheritance,Singleton methods,polymorphism(accomplished by over riding and overloading) are some oo concepts supported by ruby. ...
6. What are the looping structures available in Ruby?
for..in
untill..end
while..end
do..end
7. What are the operators available in Ruby?
Something that’s used in an expression to manipulate objects such as + (plus), - (minus), * (multiply), and / (divide). You can also use operators to do comparisons,such as with <, >, and &&.
8. How is class methods defined in Ruby?
def self.methodname
--------
--------
end
or
def classname.methodname
--------
--------
end
9. How is class methods defined in Ruby?
A:def self.methodname
--------
--------
end
or
def classname.methodname
--------
--------
end
10. What is the difference between nil and false in ruby?
False is a boolean datatype Nil is not a data type
11. What is the log that has to seen to check for an error in ruby rails?
Rails will report errors from Apache in log/apache.log and errors from the Ruby code in log/development.log. If you're having a problem, do have a look at what these logs are saying. On Unix and Mac OS X you may run tail -f log/development.log in a separate terminal to monitor your application's execution.
12. What is the Install rail package?
There are several packages that you can download and install. The prebuilt Rails installer called Install rail which currently is only for Windows
13. Where does the start_tabnav gets informations for tabs rendering in ruby rail?
The main Symbol let the start_tabnav method know to look for a special MainTabnav class where all the magic happens.
14. What is the use of super in ruby rails?
Ruby uses the super keyword to call the superclass implementation of the current method
15. What is the log that has to seen to check for an error in ruby rails?
Rails will report errors from Apache in log/apache.log and errors from the Ruby code in log/development.log. If you're having a problem, do have a look at what these logs are saying. On Unix and Mac OS X you may run tail -f log/development.log in a separate terminal to monitor your application's execution.
16. What is the Install rail package?
There are several packages that you can download and install. The prebuilt Rails installer called Install rail which currently is only for Windows
17. Where does the start_tabnav gets informations for tabs rendering in ruby rail?
The main Symbol let the start_tabnav method know to look for a special MainTabnav class where all the magic happens
What is the use of global variable $ in Ruby?
If you declare one variable as global we can access any where, where as class variable visibility only in the class Example
class Test
def h
 $a = 5
 @b = 4
Â
while $a > 0
puts $a
$a= $a - 1
end
end
end
test = Test.new
test.h
puts $a                    # 5
puts @b                   #nil
What is the log that has to seen to check for an error in ruby rails?
Rails will report errors from Apache in log/apache.log and errors from the Ruby code in log/development.log. If you're having a problem, do have a look at what these logs are saying. On Unix and Mac OS X you may run tail -f log/development.log in a separate terminal to monitor your application's execution.
What's the difference in scope for these two variables: @name and @@name?
@name is an instance variable and @@name is a class variable
How do the following methods differ: @my_string.strip and @my_string.strip! ?
The strip! method modifies the variable directly. Calling strip (without the !) returns a copy of the variable with the modifications, the original variable is not altered.
What is the naming conventions for methods that return a boolean result?
Methods that return a boolean result are typically named with a ending question mark. For example: def active? return true #just always returning true end

Ruby on Rails FAQs

1. What is Ruby?
Ruby is a pure object-oriented programming language with a super clean syntax that makes programming elegant and fun. Ruby successfully combines Smalltalk's conceptual elegance, Python's ease of use and learning, and Perl's pragmatism. Ruby originated in Japan in the early 1990s, and has started to become popular worldwide in the past few years as more English language books and documentation have become available.
2. What is Rails?
Rails is an open source Ruby framework for developing database-backed web applications. What's special about that? There are dozens of frameworks out there and most of them have been around much longer than Rails. Why should you care about yet another framework? What would you think if I told you that you could develop a web application at least ten times faster with Rails than you could with a typical Java framework? You can--without making any sacrifices in the quality of your application! How is this possible? Part of the answer is in the Ruby programming language. Many things that are very simple to do in Ruby are not even possible in most other languages. Rails takes full advantage of this. The rest of the answer is in two of Rail's guiding principles: less software and convention over configuration. Less software means you write fewer lines of code to implement your application. Keeping your code small means faster development and fewer bugs, which makes your code easier to understand, maintain, and enhance. Very shortly, you will see how Rails cuts your code burden. Convention over configuration means an end to verbose XML configuration files--there aren't any in Rails! Instead of configuration files, a Rails application uses a few simple programming conventions that allow it to figure out everything through reflection and discovery. Your application code and your running database already contain everything that Rails needs to know!
3. How to capitalize UTF8 string without downcasing?
What is the best way to capitalize the first character of a UTF8 string? String#capitalize downcases the rest of the string which is unacceptable since there can be capitals in the middle of the string. ("see New York".capitalize => "See new york"). Just picking off the first byte and capitalizing that is also not an option since the first character can be a multibyte UTF-8 character. The only thing I can think of so far is either using Ruby 1.9 or the the Rails multibyte Chars library to split off the first character and then capitalize that and join it back together. Surely there must be a better way for such a common problem?
4. What is the naming conventions for methods that return a boolean result?
Methods that return a boolean result are typically named with a ending question mark. For example: def active? return true #just always returning true end
5. What are the object-oriented programming features supported by Ruby?
Classes,Objects,Inheritance,Singleton methods,polymorphism(accomplished by over riding and overloading) are some oo concepts supported by ruby. ...
6. What are the operating systems supported by Ruby?
Windows and linux operating systems are supported by the Ruby
7.Whats the difference between symbol and string?
Symbol refers to the same memory location where string generates a new id every time for eg.
STRING
irb(main):019:0> "ruby".object_id
=> 24095860
irb(main):020:0> "ruby".object_id
=> 24092310
irb(main):021:0> "ruby".object_id
=> 24088760
irb(main):022:0>
SYMBOL
irb(main):022:0> :ruby.object_id
=> 102978
irb(main):023:0> :ruby.object_id
=> 102978
irb(main):024:0> :ruby.object_id
=> 102978
irb(main):025:0> :ruby.object_id
=> 102978
irb(main):026:0>
8. How do you comment out a block of code?
Use =begin and =end. =begin def
my_commented_out_method end =end
You could use successive # signs, but that's just tedious: # # def my commented_out_method # end #
9. How would you create a new ruby rail application?
To create a new ruby rail application rails my_app cd my_app
10. What is the difference between nil and false in ruby?
False is a boolean datatype Nil is not a data type
11. What two delimiters are used for blocks?
Curly braces {...} and "do"..."end" Bonus: coding convention is to use curly braces if the code will fit on one line and "do"..."end" syntax if the block contains multiple lines.
12. What is the naming conventions for methods that return a boolean result?
Methods that return a boolean result are typically named with a ending question mark. For example: def active? return true #just always returning true end
13. Explain about the programming language ruby?
Ruby is the interpreted scripting language for quick and easy object-oriented programming. It has many features to process text files and to do system management tasks (as in Perl). It is simple, straight-forward, extensible, and portable. Oh, I need to mention, it's totally free, which means not only free of charge, but also freedom to use, copy, modify, and distribute it.
Features of Ruby
* Ruby has simple syntax, partially inspired by Eiffel and Ada.
* Ruby has exception handling features, like Java or Python, to make it easy to handle errors.
* Ruby's operators are syntax sugar for the methods. You can redefine them easily.
* Ruby is a complete, full, pure object oriented language: OOL. This means all data in Ruby is an object, in the sense of Smalltalk: no exceptions. Example: In Ruby, the number 1 is an instance of class Fixnum.
* Ruby's OO is carefully designed to be both complete and open for improvements. Example: Ruby has the ability to add methods to a class, or even to an instance during runtime. So, if needed, an instance of one class *can* behave differently from other instances of the same class.
* Ruby features single inheritance only, *on purpose*. But Ruby knows the concept of modules (called Categories in Objective-C). Modules are collections of methods. Every class can import a module and so gets all its methods for free. Some of us think that this is a much clearer way than multiple inheritance, which is complex, and not used very often compared with single inheritance (don't count C++ here, as it has often no other choice due to strong type checking!).
* Ruby features true closures. Not just unnamed function, but with present variable bindings.
* Ruby features blocks in its syntax (code surrounded by '{' ... '}' or 'do' ... 'end'). These blocks can be passed to methods, or converted into closures.
* Ruby features a true mark-and-sweep garbage collector. It works with all Ruby objects. You don't have to care about maintaining reference counts in extension libraries. This is better for your health. ;-)
* Writing C extensions in Ruby is easier than in Perl or Python, due partly to the garbage collector, and partly to the fine extension API. SWIG interface is also available.
* Integers in Ruby can (and should) be used without counting their internal representation. There *are* small integers (instances of class Fixnum) and large integers (Bignum), but you need not worry over which one is used currently. If a value is small enough, an integer is a Fixnum, otherwise it is a Bignum. Conversion occurs automatically.
* Ruby needs no variable declarations. It uses simple naming conventions to denote the scope of variables. Examples: simple 'var' = local variable, '@var' = instance variable, '$var' = global variable. So it is also not necessary to use a tiresome 'self.' prepended to every instance member.
* Ruby can load extension libraries dynamically if an OS allows.
* Ruby features OS independent threading. Thus, for all platforms on which Ruby runs, you also have multithreading, regardless of if the OS supports it or not, even on MS-DOS! ;-)
* Ruby is highly portable: it is developed mostly on Linux, but works on many types of UNIX, DOS, Windows 95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP, MacOS, BeOS, OS/2, etc.
14. Why Ruby on Rails?
1)for fast developing websites
2)convention over configuration
3)scaffolding
4)pure Object oriented concepts
5)less coding
6)easy understanding of coding
7)follows MVC architecture
8)using library and gem files