Interview Tips Interview Tips, Interview Questions and Answers

21May/100

What is the difference between Server.Transfer and Server.Execute?

Both Server.Transfer and Server.Execute were introduced in Classic ASP 3.0 (and still work in ASP.NET).

When Server.Execute is used, a URL is passed to it as a parameter, and the control moves to this new page. Execution of code happens on the new page. Once code execution gets over, the control returns to the initial page, just after where it was called. However, in the case of Server.Transfer, it works very much the same, the difference being the execution stops at the new page itself (means the control is'nt returned to the calling page).

In both the cases, the URL in the browser remains the first page url (does'nt refresh to the new page URL) as the browser is'nt requested to do so.

12Apr/100

asp.net interview questions on cookie

The cookie object is the essence of any interview, be it ASP NET interview or Java interview or PHP interview.
Cookie - A cookie is a piece of data that is stored on a user's browser. Thus, a cookie does not use any server memory. It is actually a small text file which is created by the broswer on the hard disk of the user. It is actually a piece of information in the form of text strings. A web server sends a cookie to a user (client browser) and then the browser stores it.
A cookie is used to store information of a user & information about a user's preferences. How does the cookie works? - When a user visits a site, say www.amazon.com, and creates a profile out there, the server sends an ID (basically an ID to track this user) and saves the ID through the user's browser in the form of a cookie on the user's system. When the user revisits this site, the website tracks the user's system for the existence of any cookie, and in case it finds a cookie, it customizes the site based on the user's settings and preferences.
Now lets talk about how to create a cookie in ASP.NET. It is pretty simple. There is a class in the System.Web namespace by the name HttpCookie. This class may be used to easily create a cookie on the user's system. Below is a code sample on how to use a cookie in ASP.NET ...

//Creating a cookie HttpCookie sampleCookie = new HttpCookie("UserColorSetting");
sampleCookie.Values.Add("Background", txtBackgroundColor.Text);
sampleCookie.Expires = #12/31/2010#; Response.Cookies.Add(sampleCookie);
//Getting a cookie value from the user's computer
String sGetCookie;
sGetCookie = Request.Cookies("UserColorSetting")("Background").ToString();

Limitations of Cookies - Cookies are meant for infrequent storage of small pieces of information. They are not meant as a normal communication or mechanism. Note that web browsers are not required to save more than 300 cookies total, nor more than 20 cookies per web server (for the entire server, not just for the page or site on the server), nor to retain more than 4 kilobytes of data per cookie (both name and value count towards this 4 kilobyte limit). The biggest limitation of these is the 20 cookies per server limit, and so it is not a good idea to use a different cookie for each variable that has to be saved. Rather save a single cookie containing a lot of information.

29Mar/100

SQL Optimization Tips

• Use views and stored procedures instead of heavy-duty queries.
This can reduce network traffic, because your client will send to
server only stored procedure or view name (perhaps with some
parameters) instead of large heavy-duty queries text. This can be used
to facilitate permission management also, because you can restrict
user access to table columns they should not see.
• Use table variables instead of temporary tables.
Table variables require less locking and logging resources than
temporary tables, so table variables should be used whenever possible.
The table variables are available in SQL Server 2000 only.
• Try to use UNION ALL statement instead of UNION, whenever possible.
The UNION ALL statement is much faster than UNION, because UNION ALL
statement does not look for duplicate rows, and UNION statement does
look for duplicate rows, whether or not they exist.
• Try to avoid using the DISTINCT clause, whenever possible.
Because using the DISTINCT clause will result in some performance
degradation, you should use this clause only when it is necessary.
• Try to avoid using SQL Server cursors, whenever possible.
SQL Server cursors can result in some performance degradation in
comparison with select statements. Try to use correlated sub-query or
derived tables, if you need to perform row-by-row operations.
• If you need to return the total table's row count, you can use
alternative way instead of SELECT COUNT(*) statement.
Because SELECT COUNT(*) statement make a full table scan to return the
total table's row count, it can take very many time for the large
table. There is another way to determine the total row count in a
table. You can use sysindexes system table, in this case. There is
ROWS column in the sysindexes table. This column contains the total
row count for each table in your database. So, you can use the
following select statement instead of SELECT COUNT(*): SELECT rows
FROM sysindexes WHERE id = OBJECT_ID('table_name') AND indid < 2 So,
you can improve the speed of such queries in several times.
• Include SET NOCOUNT ON statement into your stored procedures to stop
the message indicating the number of rows affected by a T-SQL statement.
This can reduce network traffic, because your client will not receive
the message indicating the number of rows affected by a T-SQL statement.

28Mar/101

ASP .NET Interview Questions, Part 1

1. Describe the role of inetinfo.exe, aspnet_isapi.dll andaspnet_wp.exe in the page loading process. inetinfo.exe is theMicrosoft IIS server running, handling ASP.NET requests among other things.When an ASP.NET request is received (usually a file with .aspx extension),the ISAPI filter aspnet_isapi.dll takes care of it by passing the request tothe actual worker process aspnet_wp.exe.

2. What’s the difference between Response.Write() andResponse.Output.Write()? The latter one allows you to write formattedoutput.

3. What methods are fired during the page load? Init() – when the pageis instantiated, Load() – when the page is loaded into server memory,PreRender() – the brief moment before the page is displayed to the user asHTML, Unload() – when page finishes loading.

4. Where does the Web page belong in the .NET Framework class hierarchy?System.Web.UI.Page

5. Where do you store the information about the user’s locale? System.Web.UI.Page.Culture

6. What’s the difference between Codebehind=”MyCode.aspx.cs” andSrc=”MyCode.aspx.cs”? CodeBehind is relevant to Visual Studio.NET only.

7. What’s a bubbled event? When you have a complex control, like DataGrid, writing an event processing routine for each object (cell, button, row, etc.) is quite tedious. The controls can bubble up their eventhandlers, allowing the main DataGrid event handler to take care of its constituents.

8. Suppose you want a certain ASP.NET function executed on MouseOver overa certain button. Where do you add an event handler? It’s the Attributesproperty, the Add function inside that property. So btnSubmit.Attributes.Add(“onMouseOver”,”someClientCode();”)

9. What data type does the RangeValidator control support? Integer,String and Date.

10. Explain the differences between Server-side and Client-side code? Server-side code runs on the server. Client-side code runs in the clients’ browser.

11. What type of code (server or client) is found in a Code-Behind class? Server-side code.

12. Should validation (did the user enter a real date) occur server-side or client-side? Why? Client-side. This reduces an additional request to the server to validate the users input.

13. What does the “EnableViewState” property do? Why would I want it on or off? It enables the viewstate on the page. It allows the page to save the users input on a form.

14. What is the difference between Server.Transfer and Response.Redirect? Why would I choose one over the other? Server.Transfer is used to post a form to another page. Response.Redirect is used to redirect the user to another page or site.

15. Can you explain the difference between an ADO.NET Dataset and an ADO Recordset?

· A DataSet can represent an entire relational database in memory, complete with tables, relations, and views.

· A DataSet is designed to work without any continuing connection to the original data source.

· Data in a DataSet is bulk-loaded, rather than being loaded on demand.

· There’s no concept of cursor types in a DataSet.

· DataSets have no current record pointer You can use For Each loops to move through the data.

· You can store many edits in a DataSet, and write them to the original data source in a single operation.

· Though the DataSet is universal, other objects in ADO.NET come in different versions for different data sources.

16. Can you give an example of what might be best suited to place in the Application_Start and Session_Start subroutines? This is where you can set the specific variables for the Application and Session objects.

17. If I’m developing an application that must accommodate multiple security levels though secure login and my ASP.NET web application is spanned across three web-servers (using round-robin load balancing) what would be the best approach to maintain login-in state for the users? Maintain the login state security through a database.

18. Can you explain what inheritance is and an example of when you might use it? When you want to inherit (use the functionality of) another class. Base Class Employee. A Manager class could be derived from the Employee base class.

26Mar/100

C# Interview Questions, Part 3

41. What’s the difference between // comments, /* */ comments and /// comments? Single-line, multi-line and XML documentation comments.

42. How do you generate documentation from the C# file commented properly with a command-line compiler? Compile it with a /doc switch.

43. What’s the difference between and XML documentation tag? Single line code example and multiple-line code example.

44. Is XML case-sensitive? Yes, so and are different elements.

45. What debugging tools come with the .NET SDK? CorDBG – command-line debugger, and DbgCLR – graphic debugger. Visual Studio .NET uses the DbgCLR. To use CorDbg, you must compile the original C# file using the /debug switch.

46. What does the This window show in the debugger? It points to the object that’s pointed to by this reference. Object’s instance data is shown.

47. What does assert() do? In debug compilation, assert takes in a Boolean condition as a parameter, and shows the error dialog if the condition is false. The program proceeds without any interruption if the condition is true.

48. What’s the difference between the Debug class and Trace class? Documentation looks the same. Use Debug class for debug builds, use Trace class for both debug and release builds.

49. Why are there five tracing levels in System.Diagnostics.TraceSwitcher? The tracing dumps can be quite verbose and for some applications that are constantly running you run the risk of overloading the machine and the hard drive there. Five levels range from None to Verbose, allowing to fine-tune the tracing activities.

50. Where is the output of TextWriterTraceListener redirected? To the Console or a text file depending on the parameter passed to the constructor.

51. How do you debug an ASP.NET Web application? Attach the aspnet_wp.exe process to the DbgClr debugger.

52. What are three test cases you should go through in unit testing? Positive test cases (correct data, correct output), negative test cases (broken or missing data, proper handling), exception test cases (exceptions are thrown and caught properly).

53. Can you change the value of a variable while debugging a C# application? Yes, if you are debugging via Visual Studio.NET, just go to Immediate window.

54. Explain the three services model (three-tier application). Presentation (UI), business (logic and underlying code) and data (from storage or other sources).

55. 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, but it’s a .NET layer on top of OLE layer, so not the fastest thing in the world. ODBC.NET is a deprecated layer provided for backward compatibility to ODBC engines.

56. What’s the role of the DataReader class in ADO.NET connections? It returns a read-only dataset from the data source when the command is executed.

57. 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%’.

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

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

60. 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.

61. Why would you use untrusted verificaion? Web Services might use it, as well as non-Windows applications.

62. What does the parameter Initial Catalog define inside Connection String? The database name to connect to.

63. What’s the data provider name to connect to Access database? Microsoft.Access.

64. What does Dispose method do with the connection object? Deletes it from the memory.

65. 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.

9Mar/101

asp.net questions and answers

Whether azure supports all OS?
No it supports Windows 7, Vista, Windows 2008 server.

What is the difference between document.getElementById('<%= btnMakeUpdate.ClientID %>').name AND document.getElementById('<%= btnMakeUpdate.UniqueID %>')?
There is no difference. Both will use control's id seperated using $ sign.

MaintainScrollPositionOnPostback will work in Ajax Postback.
NOTE: This is objective type question, Please click question title for correct answer.

You are going to deploy a website on live server. Which build option you will select while building the website? 1. Debug 2. Release
You should select Release .

Your site is deployed on testing server and you make some change in web.config file stored on the server. What will happen to the user's who are accessing site at that time?
When you make any change in web.config file then IIS restarts automatically so all the session and application variables get reset. This can affect user drastically as their session is lost.

Can you add title to browser history point?
Yes, we can add.

Can you hash state information of URL ?
NOTE: This is objective type question, Please click question title for correct answer.

Can you have multiple form tags in a page?
YES.
Page can have multiple form tags but only one of them can contain runat=”server” atrribute at a time.

19Feb/100

ASP.NET Interview Questions: ViewState

(1) Does the performance for view state vary according to User controls?

Performance of view state varies depending on the type of server control to which it is applied. Label, Text Box, Check Box, Radio Button, and Hyper Link are server controls that perform well with View State. Drop Down List, List Box, Data Grid, and Data List suffer from poor performance because of their size and the large amounts of data making roundtrips to the server.

(2) What is View State?

View state is a built-in structure for automatically retaining values amongst the multiple requests for the same page. The view state is internally maintained as a hidden field on the page but is hashed, providing greater security than developer-implemented hidden fields do.

(3) What are benefits and Limitation of using View state for state management?

Following are the benefits of using View state:-
. No server resources are required because state is in a structure in the page code.
. Simplicity.
. States are retained automatically.
. The values in view state are hashed, compressed, and encoded, thus representing a higher state of security than hidden fields.
. View state is good for caching data in Web frame configurations because the data is cached on the client.
Following are limitation of using View state:-
. Page loading and posting performance decreases when large values are stored because view state is stored in the page.
. Although view state stores data in a hashed format, it can still be tampered because it is stored in a hidden field on the page. The information in

the hidden field can also be seen if the page output source is viewed directly, creating a potential security risk.
Below is sample of storing values in view state.

this. ViewState ["Enter Time"] = Date Time. Now. To String();

17Feb/100

ASP.NET Interview Questions: Different States in ASP.NET

You can see that a browser on the client side requests a page from the web server. After processing the request and returning the page, the server drops the connection. Then. if the browser makes another request the server has no way to associate the browser with the previous request. So HTTP is called as a stateless protocol. But ASP.NET provides several ways to maintain the state.

View State

View state is used to maintain the values of server control properties. AS ASP.NET implements view state by default you need not to write any special code to use it.

Session State

Session state is used to maintain data between execution of an application. For this, ASP.NET creates a session state object that is kept on the server whenever a user starts a new session. The session state object contain unique session ID, and this ID is sent back and forth between the server and browser each time the user request a page. Then when the server receives a new request from the user, it can retrive the right session state object for that user. You can add data items to the session object in your code, so there previous values are available each time a web form is executed.

Application State

ASP.NET provides an application state object to save application state data, which applies to all the users of an application. You can use application state object to manage global counters to maintain a list of users who are currently logged on to an application.

Profile

ASP.NET also provides profile feature to keep track of user data. Although a profile is similar to session state object, it persists between user session as it is stored in a database. For example we can use profiles we can keep track of the products ordered by an user in an shopping application and when the user starts a new session, you can display those products in a "ordered items" listbox.