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| Q: | What are pass by reference and passby value? |
| A: | Pass By Reference means the passing the address itself rather than passing the value. Pass by Value means passing a copy of the value to be passed. |
| Q: | What is HashMap and Map? |
| A: | Map is Interface and Hashmap is class that implements that. |
| Q: | Difference between Vector and ArrayList? |
| A: | Vector is synchronized whereas arraylist is not. |
| Q: | Difference between Swing and Awt? |
| A: | AWT are heavy-weight components. Swings are light-weight components. Hence swing works faster than AWT. |
| Q: | What if the main method is declared as private? |
| A: | The program compiles properly but at runtime it will give "Main method not public." message. |
| Q: | What if the static modifier is removed from the signature of the main method? |
| A: | Program compiles. But at runtime throws an error "NoSuchMethodError". |
| Q: | What if I write static public void instead of public static void? |
| A: | Program compiles and runs properly. |
| Q: | What if I do not provide the String array as the argument to the method? |
| A: | Program compiles but throws a runtime error "NoSuchMethodError". |
| Q: | What is the first argument of the String array in main method? |
| A: | The String array is empty. It does not have any element. This is unlike C/C++ where the first element by default is the program name. |
| Q: | If I do not provide any arguments on the command line, then the String array of Main method will be empty of null? |
| A: | It is empty. But not null. |
| A: | Print args.length. It will print 0. That means it is empty. But if it would have been null then it would have thrown a NullPointerException on attempting to print args.length. |
| Q: | What environment variables do I need to set on my machine in order to be able to run Java programs? |
| A: | CLASSPATH and PATH are the two variables. |
| Q: | Can an application have multiple classes having main method? |
| A: | Yes it is possible. While starting the application we mention the class name to be run. The JVM will look for the Main method only in the class whose name you have mentioned. Hence there is not conflict amongst the multiple classes having main method. |
| Q: | Can I have multiple main methods in the same class? |
| A: | No the program fails to compile. The compiler says that the main method is already defined in the class. |
| Q: | Do I need to import java.lang package any time? Why ? |
| A: | No. It is by default loaded internally by the JVM. |
| Q: | Can I import same package/class twice? Will the JVM load the package twice at runtime? |
| A: | One can import the same package or same class multiple times. Neither compiler nor JVM complains abt it. And the JVM will internally load the class only once no matter how many times you import the same class. |
| Q: | What are Checked and UnChecked Exception? |
| A: | A checked exception is some subclass of Exception (or Exception itself), excluding class RuntimeException and its subclasses. Making an exception checked forces client programmers to deal with the possibility that the exception will be thrown. eg, IOException thrown by java.io.FileInputStream's read() method· Unchecked exceptions are RuntimeException and any of its subclasses. Class Error and its subclasses also are unchecked. With an unchecked exception, however, the compiler doesn't force client programmers either to catch the exception or declare it in a throws clause. In fact, client programmers may not even know that the exception could be thrown. eg, StringIndexOutOfBoundsException thrown by String's charAt() method· Checked exceptions must be caught at compile time. Runtime exceptions do not need to be. Errors often cannot be. |
| Q: | What is Overriding? |
| A: | When a class defines a method using the same name, return type, and arguments as a method in its superclass, the method in the class overrides the method in the superclass. When the method is invoked for an object of the class, it is the new definition of the method that is called, and not the method definition from superclass. Methods may be overridden to be more public, not more private. |
| Q: | What are different types of inner classes? |
| A: | Nested top-level classes, Member classes, Local classes, Anonymous classes Nested top-level classes- If you declare a class within a class and specify the static modifier, the compiler treats the class just like any other top-level class. Any class outside the declaring class accesses the nested class with the declaring class name acting similarly to a package. eg, outer.inner. Top-level inner classes implicitly have access only to static variables.There can also be inner interfaces. All of these are of the nested top-level variety. Member classes - Member inner classes are just like other member methods and member variables and access to the member class is restricted, just like methods and variables. This means a public member class acts similarly to a nested top-level class. The primary difference between member classes and nested top-level classes is that member classes have access to the specific instance of the enclosing class. Local classes - Local classes are like local variables, specific to a block of code. Their visibility is only within the block of their declaration. In order for the class to be useful beyond the declaration block, it would need to implement a more publicly available interface.Because local classes are not members, the modifiers public, protected, private, and static are not usable. Anonymous classes - Anonymous inner classes extend local inner classes one level further. As anonymous classes have no name, you cannot provide a constructor. |
| Q: | Are the imports checked for validity at compile time? e.g. will the code containing an import such as java.lang.ABCD compile? |
| A: | Yes the imports are checked for the semantic validity at compile time. The code containing above line of import will not compile. It will throw an error saying,can not resolve symbol symbol : class ABCD location: package io import java.io.ABCD; |
| Q: | Does importing a package imports the subpackages as well? e.g. Does importing com.MyTest.* also import com.MyTest.UnitTests.*? |
| A: | No you will have to import the subpackages explicitly. Importing com.MyTest.* will import classes in the package MyTest only. It will not import any class in any of it's subpackage. |
| Q: | What is the difference between declaring a variable and defining a variable? |
| A: | In declaration we just mention the type of the variable and it's name. We do not initialize it. But defining means declaration + initialization. e.g String s; is just a declaration while String s = new String ("abcd"); Or String s = "abcd"; are both definitions. |
| Q: | What is the default value of an object reference declared as an instance variable? |
| A: | null unless we define it explicitly. |
| Q: | Can a top level class be private or protected? |
| A: | No. A top level class can not be private or protected. It can have either "public" or no modifier. If it does not have a modifier it is supposed to have a default access.If a top level class is declared as private the compiler will complain that the "modifier private is not allowed here". This means that a top level class can not be private. Same is the case with protected. |
| Q: | What type of parameter passing does Java support? |
| A: | In Java the arguments are always passed by value . |
| Q: | Primitive data types are passed by reference or pass by value? |
| A: | Primitive data types are passed by value. |
| Q: | Objects are passed by value or by reference? |
| A: | Java only supports pass by value. With objects, the object reference itself is passed by value and so both the original reference and parameter copy both refer to the same object . |
| Q: | What is serialization? |
| A: | Serialization is a mechanism by which you can save the state of an object by converting it to a byte stream. |
| Q: | How do I serialize an object to a file? |
| A: | The class whose instances are to be serialized should implement an interface Serializable. Then you pass the instance to the ObjectOutputStream which is connected to a fileoutputstream. This will save the object to a file. |
| Q: | Which methods of Serializable interface should I implement? |
| A: | The serializable interface is an empty interface, it does not contain any methods. So we do not implement any methods. |
| Q: | How can I customize the seralization process? i.e. how can one have a control over the serialization process? |
| A: | Yes 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. |
| Q: | What is the common usage of serialization? |
| A: | Whenever an object is to be sent over the network, objects need to be serialized. Moreover if the state of an object is to be saved, objects need to be serilazed. |
| Q: | What is Externalizable interface? |
| A: | Externalizable is an interface which contains two methods readExternal and writeExternal. These methods give you a control over the serialization mechanism. Thus if your class implements this interface, you can customize the serialization process by implementing these methods. |
| Q: | What happens to the object references included in the object? |
| A: | The serialization mechanism generates an object graph for serialization. Thus it determines whether the included object references are serializable or not. This is a recursive process. Thus when an object is serialized, all the included objects are also serialized alongwith the original obect. |
| Q: | How are Observer and Observable used? |
| A: | Objects that subclass the Observable class maintain a list of observers. When an Observable object is updated it invokes the update() method of each of its observers to notify the observers that it has changed state. The Observer interface is implemented by objects that observe Observable objects. |
| Q: | What is synchronization and why is it important? |
| A: | With respect to multithreading, synchronization is the capability to control the access of multiple threads to shared resources. Without synchronization, it is possible for one thread to modify a shared object while another thread is in the process of using or updating that object's value. This often leads to significant errors. |
| Q: | How does Java handle integer overflows and underflows? |
| A: | It uses those low order bytes of the result that can fit into the size of the type allowed by the operation. |
| Q: | Does garbage collection guarantee that a program will not run out of memory? |
| A: | Garbage collection does not guarantee that a program will not run out of memory. It is possible for programs to use up memory resources faster than they are garbage collected. It is also possible for programs to create objects that are not subject to garbage collection . |
| Q: | What is the difference between preemptive scheduling and time slicing? |
| A: | Under preemptive scheduling, the highest priority task executes until it enters the waiting or dead states or a higher priority task comes into existence. Under time slicing, a task executes for a predefined slice of time and then reenters the pool of ready tasks. The scheduler then determines which task should execute next, based on priority and other factors. |
| Q: | When a thread is created and started, what is its initial state? |
| A: | A thread is in the ready state after it has been created and started. |
| Q: | What is the purpose of finalization? |
| A: | The purpose of finalization is to give an unreachable object the opportunity to perform any cleanup processing before the object is garbage collected. |
| Q: | What is the Locale class? |
| A: | The Locale class is used to tailor program output to the conventions of a particular geographic, political, or cultural region. |
| Q: | What is the difference between a while statement and a do statement? |
| A: | A while statement checks at the beginning of a loop to see whether the next loop iteration should occur. A do statement checks at the end of a loop to see whether the next iteration of a loop should occur. The do statement will always execute the body of a loop at least once. |
| Q: | What is the difference between static and non-static variables? |
| A: | A static variable is associated with the class as a whole rather than with specific instances of a class. Non-static variables take on unique values with each object instance. |
| Q: | How are this() and super() used with constructors? |
| A: | Othis() is used to invoke a constructor of the same class. super() is used to invoke a superclass constructor. |
| Q: | What are synchronized methods and synchronized statements? |
| A: | Synchronized methods are methods that are used to control access to an object. A thread only executes a synchronized method after it has acquired the lock for the method's object or class. Synchronized statements are similar to synchronized methods. A synchronized statement can only be executed after a thread has acquired the lock for the object or class referenced in the synchronized statement. |
| Q: | Does Java provide any construct to find out the size of an object? |
| A: | No there is not sizeof operator in Java. So there is not direct way to determine the size of an object directly in Java. |
| Q: | Does importing a package imports the subpackages as well? e.g. Does importing com.MyTest.* also import com.MyTest.UnitTests.*? |
| A: | Read the system time just before the method is invoked and immediately after method returns. Take the time difference, which will give you the time taken by a method for execution. To put it in code... long start = System.currentTimeMillis (); method (); long end = System.currentTimeMillis (); System.out.println ("Time taken for execution is " + (end - start)); Remember that if the time taken for execution is too small, it might show that it is taking zero milliseconds for execution. Try it on a method which is big enough, in the sense the one which is doing considerable amout of processing. |
| Q: | What are wrapper classes? |
| A: | Java provides specialized classes corresponding to each of the primitive data types. These are called wrapper classes. They are e.g. Integer, Character, Double etc. |
| Q: | Why do we need wrapper classes? |
| A: | It is sometimes easier to deal with primitives as objects. Moreover most of the collection classes store objects and not primitive data types. And also the wrapper classes provide many utility methods also. Because of these resons we need wrapper classes. And since we create instances of these classes we can store them in any of the collection classes and pass them around as a collection. Also we can pass them around as method parameters where a method expects an object. |
| Q: | What are checked exceptions? |
| A: | Checked exception are those which the Java compiler forces you to catch. e.g. IOException are checked Exceptions. |
| Q: | What are runtime exceptions? |
| A: | Runtime exceptions are those exceptions that are thrown at runtime because of either wrong input data or because of wrong business logic etc. These are not checked by the compiler at compile time. |
| Q: | What is the difference between error and an exception? |
| A: | An error is an irrecoverable condition occurring at runtime. Such as OutOfMemory error. These JVM errors and you can not repair them at runtime. While exceptions are conditions that occur because of bad input etc. e.g. FileNotFoundException will be thrown if the specified file does not exist. Or a NullPointerException will take place if you try using a null reference. In most of the cases it is possible to recover from an exception (probably by giving user a feedback for entering proper values etc.). |
| Q: | How to create custom exceptions? |
| A: | Your class should extend class Exception, or some more specific type thereof. |
| Q: | If I want an object of my class to be thrown as an exception object, what should I do? |
| A: | The class should extend from Exception class. Or you can extend your class from some more precise exception type also. |
| Q: | If my class already extends from some other class what should I do if I want an instance of my class to be thrown as an exception object? |
| A: | One can not do anytihng in this scenarion. Because Java does not allow multiple inheritance and does not provide any exception interface as well. |
| Q: | What happens to an unhandled exception? |
| A: | One can not do anytihng in this scenarion. Because Java does not allow multiple inheritance and does not provide any exception interface as well. |
| Q: | How does an exception permeate through the code? |
| A: | An unhandled exception moves up the method stack in search of a matching When an exception is thrown from a code which is wrapped in a try block followed by one or more catch blocks, a search is made for matching catch block. If a matching type is found then that block will be invoked. If a matching type is not found then the exception moves up the method stack and reaches the caller method. Same procedure is repeated if the caller method is included in a try catch block. This process continues until a catch block handling the appropriate type of exception is found. If it does not find such a block then finally the program terminates. |
| Q: | What are the different ways to handle exceptions? |
| A: | There are two ways to handle exceptions, 1. By wrapping the desired code in a try block followed by a catch block to catch the exceptions. and 2. List the desired exceptions in the throws clause of the method and let the caller of the method hadle those exceptions. |
| Q: | Q: What is the basic difference between the 2 approaches to exception handling...1> try catch block and 2> specifying the candidate exceptions in the throws clause? When should you use which approach? |
| A: | In the first approach as a programmer of the method, you urself are dealing with the exception. This is fine if you are in a best position to decide should be done in case of an exception. Whereas if it is not the responsibility of the method to deal with it's own exceptions, then do not use this approach. In this case use the second approach. In the second approach we are forcing the caller of the method to catch the exceptions, that the method is likely to throw. This is often the approach library creators use. They list the exception in the throws clause and we must catch them. You will find the same approach throughout the java libraries we use. |
| Q: | Is it necessary that each try block must be followed by a catch block? |
| A: | It is not necessary that each try block must be followed by a catch block. It should be followed by either a catch block OR a finally block. And whatever exceptions are likely to be thrown should be declared in the throws clause of the method. |
| Q: | If I write return at the end of the try block, will the finally block still execute? |
| A: | Yes even if you write return as the last statement in the try block and no exception occurs, the finally block will execute. The finally block will execute and then the control return. |
| Q: | If I write System.exit (0); at the end of the try block, will the finally block still execute? |
| A: | No in this case the finally block will not execute because when you say System.exit (0); the control immediately goes out of the program, and thus finally never executes. |
| Q: | What is a output comment? |
| A: | A comment that is sent to the client in the viewable page source.The JSP engine handles an output comment as uninterpreted HTML text, returning the comment in the HTML output sent to the client. You can see the comment by viewing the page source from your Web browser. JSP Syntax <!-- comment [ <%= expression %> ] --> Example 1 <!-- This is a commnet sent to client on <%= (new java.util.Date()).toLocaleString() %> --> Displays in the page source: <!-- This is a commnet sent to client on January 24, 2004 --> |
| Q: | What is a Hidden Comment? |
| A: | A comments that documents the JSP page but is not sent to the client. The JSP engine ignores a hidden comment, and does not process any code within hidden comment tags. A hidden comment is not sent to the client, either in the displayed JSP page or the HTML page source. The hidden comment is useful when you want to hide or "comment out" part of your JSP page. You can use any characters in the body of the comment except the closing --%> combination. If you need to use --%> in your comment, you can escape it by typing --%\>. JSP Syntax <%-- comment --%> Examples <%@ page language="java" %> <html> <head><title>A Hidden Comment </title></head> <body> <%-- This comment will not be visible to the colent in the page source --%> </body> </html> |
| Q: | What is a Expression? |
| A: | An expression tag contains a scripting language expression that is evaluated, converted to a String, and inserted where the expression appears in the JSP file. Because the value of an expression is converted to a String, you can use an expression within text in a JSP file. Like <%= someexpression %> <%= (new java.util.Date()).toLocaleString() %> You cannot use a semicolon to end an expression |
| Q: | What is a Declaration? |
| A: | A declaration declares one or more variables or methods for use later in the JSP source file. A declaration must contain at least one complete declarative statement. You can declare any number of variables or methods within one declaration tag, as long as they are separated by semicolons. The declaration must be valid in the scripting language used in the JSP file. <%! somedeclarations %> <%! int i = 0; %> <%! int a, b, c; %> |
| Q: | What is a Scriptlet? |
| A: | A scriptlet can contain any number of language statements, variable or method declarations, or expressions that are valid in the page scripting language.Within scriptlet tags, you can 1.Declare variables or methods to use later in the file (see also Declaration). 2.Write expressions valid in the page scripting language (see also Expression). 3.Use any of the JSP implicit objects or any object declared with a <jsp:useBean> tag. You must write plain text, HTML-encoded text, or other JSP tags outside the scriptlet. Scriptlets are executed at request time, when the JSP engine processes the client request. If the scriptlet produces output, the output is stored in the out object, from which you can display it. |
| Q: | What are implicit objects? List them? | |
| A: | Certain objects that are available for the use in JSP documents without being declared first. These objects are parsed by the JSP engine and inserted into the generated servlet. The implicit objects re listed below
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| Q: | Difference between forward and sendRedirect? |
| A: | When you invoke a forward request, the request is sent to another resource on the server, without the client being informed that a different resource is going to process the request. This process occurs completly with in the web container. When a sendRedirtect method is invoked, it causes the web container to return to the browser indicating that a new URL should be requested. Because the browser issues a completly new request any object that are stored as request attributes before the redirect occurs will be lost. This extra round trip a redirect is slower than forward. |
| Q: | What are the different scope valiues for the <jsp:useBean>? |
| A: | The different scope values for <jsp:useBean> are 1. page 2. request 3.session 4.application |
| Q: | Explain the life-cycle mehtods in JSP? |
| A: | THe generated servlet class for a JSP page implements the HttpJspPage interface of the javax.servlet.jsp package. Hte HttpJspPage interface extends the JspPage interface which inturn extends the Servlet interface of the javax.servlet package. the generated servlet class thus implements all the methods of the these three interfaces. The JspPage interface declares only two mehtods - jspInit() and jspDestroy() that must be implemented by all JSP pages regardless of the client-server protocol. However the JSP specification has provided the HttpJspPage interfaec specifically for the JSp pages serving HTTP requests. This interface declares one method _jspService(). The jspInit()- The container calls the jspInit() to initialize te servlet instance.It is called before any other method, and is called only once for a servlet instance. The _jspservice()- The container calls the _jspservice() for each request, passing it the request and the response objects. The jspDestroy()- The container calls this when it decides take the instance out of service. It is the last method called n the servlet instance. |
| Q: | How do I prevent the output of my JSP or Servlet pages from being cached by the browser? |
| A: | You will need to set the appropriate HTTP header attributes to prevent the dynamic content output by the JSP page from being cached by the browser. Just execute the following scriptlet at the beginning of your JSP pages to prevent them from being cached at the browser. You need both the statements to take care of some of the older browser versions. <% response.setHeader("Cache-Control","no-store"); //HTTP 1.1 response.setHeader("Pragma\","no-cache"); //HTTP 1.0 response.setDateHeader ("Expires", 0); //prevents caching at the proxy server %> |
| Q: | How does JSP handle run-time exceptions? |
| A: | You can use the errorPage attribute of the page directive to have uncaught run-time exceptions automatically forwarded to an error processing page. For example: <%@ page errorPage=\"error.jsp\" %> redirects the browser to the JSP page error.jsp if an uncaught exception is encountered during request processing. Within error.jsp, if you indicate that it is an error-processing page, via the directive: <%@ page isErrorPage=\"true\" %> Throwable object describing the exception may be accessed within the error page via the exception implicit object. Note: You must always use a relative URL as the value for the errorPage attribute. |
| Q: | How can I implement a thread-safe JSP page? What are the advantages and Disadvantages of using it? |
| A: | You can make your JSPs thread-safe by having them implement the SingleThreadModel interface. This is done by adding the directive <%@ page isThreadSafe="false" %> within your JSP page. With this, instead of a single instance of the servlet generated for your JSP page loaded in memory, you will have N instances of the servlet loaded and initialized, with the service method of each instance effectively synchronized. You can typically control the number of instances (N) that are instantiated for all servlets implementing SingleThreadModel through the admin screen for your JSP engine. More importantly, avoid using the tag for variables. If you do use this tag, then you should set isThreadSafe to true, as mentioned above. Otherwise, all requests to that page will access those variables, causing a nasty race condition. SingleThreadModel is not recommended for normal use. There are many pitfalls, including the example above of not being able to use <%! %>. You should try really hard to make them thread-safe the old fashioned way: by making them thread-safe . |
| Q: | How do I use a scriptlet to initialize a newly instantiated bean? |
| A: | A jsp:useBean action may optionally have a body. If the body is specified, its contents will be automatically invoked when the specified bean is instantiated. Typically, the body will contain scriptlets or jsp:setProperty tags to initialize the newly instantiated bean, although you are not restricted to using those alone. The following example shows the “today” property of the Foo bean initialized to the current date when it is instantiated. Note that here, we make use of a JSP expression within the jsp:setProperty action. <jsp:useBean id="foo" class="com.Bar.Foo" > <jsp:setProperty name="foo" property="today" value="<%=java.text.DateFormat.getDateInstance().format(new java.util.Date()) %>" / > <%-- scriptlets calling bean setter methods go here --%> </jsp:useBean > |
| Q: | How can I prevent the word "null" from appearing in my HTML input text fields when I populate them with a resultset that has null values? |
| A: | You could make a simple wrapper function, like <%! String blanknull(String s) { return (s == null) ? \"\" : s; } %> then use it inside your JSP form, like <input type="text" name="lastName" value="<%=blanknull(lastName)% >" > |
| Q: | What's a better approach for enabling thread-safe servlets and JSPs? SingleThreadModel Interface or Synchronization? |
| A: | Although the SingleThreadModel technique is easy to use, and works well for low volume sites, it does not scale well. If you anticipate your users to increase in the future, you may be better off implementing explicit synchronization for your shared data. The key however, is to effectively minimize the amount of code that is synchronzied so that you take maximum advantage of multithreading. Also, note that SingleThreadModel is pretty resource intensive from the server\'s perspective. The most serious issue however is when the number of concurrent requests exhaust the servlet instance pool. In that case, all the unserviced requests are queued until something becomes free - which results in poor performance. Since the usage is non-deterministic, it may not help much even if you did add more memory and increased the size of the instance pool. |
| Q: | How can I enable session tracking for JSP pages if the browser has disabled cookies? |
| A: | We know that session tracking uses cookies by default to associate a session identifier with a unique user. If the browser does not support cookies, or if cookies are disabled, you can still enable session tracking using URL rewriting. URL rewriting essentially includes the session ID within the link itself as a name/value pair. However, for this to be effective, you need to append the session ID for each and every link that is part of your servlet response. Adding the session ID to a link is greatly simplified by means of of a couple of methods: response.encodeURL() associates a session ID with a given URL, and if you are using redirection, response.encodeRedirectURL() can be used by giving the redirected URL as input. Both encodeURL() and encodeRedirectedURL() first determine whether cookies are supported by the browser; if so, the input URL is returned unchanged since the session ID will be persisted as a cookie. Consider the following example, in which two JSP files, say hello1.jsp and hello2.jsp, interact with each other. Basically, we create a new session within hello1.jsp and place an object within this session. The user can then traverse to hello2.jsp by clicking on the link present within the page. Within hello2.jsp, we simply extract the object that was earlier placed in the session and display its contents. Notice that we invoke the encodeURL() within hello1.jsp on the link used to invoke hello2.jsp; if cookies are disabled, the session ID is automatically appended to the URL, allowing hello2.jsp to still retrieve the session object. Try this example first with cookies enabled. Then disable cookie support, restart the brower, and try again. Each time you should see the maintenance of the session across pages. Do note that to get this example to work with cookies disabled at the browser, your JSP engine has to support URL rewriting. hello1.jsp <%@ page session=\"true\" %> <% Integer num = new Integer(100); session.putValue("num",num); String url =response.encodeURL("hello2.jsp"); %> <a href=\'<%=url%>\'>hello2.jsp</a> hello2.jsp <%@ page session="true" %> <% Integer i= (Integer )session.getValue("num"); out.println("Num value in session is " + i.intValue()); %> |
| Q: | Explain the life cycle methods of a Servlet. |
| A: | The javax.servlet.Servlet interface defines the three methods known as life-cycle method. public void init(ServletConfig config) throws ServletException public void service( ServletRequest req, ServletResponse res) throws ServletException, IOException public void destroy() First the servlet is constructed, then initialized wih the init() method. Any request from client are handled initially by the service() method before delegating to the doXxx() methods in the case of HttpServlet. The servlet is removed from service, destroyed with the destroy() methid, then garbaged collected and finalized. |
| Q: | What is the difference between the getRequestDispatcher(String path) method of javax.servlet.ServletRequest interface and javax.servlet.ServletContext interface? |
| A: | The getRequestDispatcher(String path) method of javax.servlet.ServletRequest interface accepts parameter the path to the resource to be included or forwarded to, which can be relative to the request of the calling servlet. If the path begins with a "/" it is interpreted as relative to the current context root. The getRequestDispatcher(String path) method of javax.servlet.ServletContext interface cannot accepts relative paths. All path must sart with a "/" and are interpreted as relative to curent context root. |
| Q: | Explain the directory structure of a web application. |
| A: | The directory structure of a web application consists of two parts. A private directory called WEB-INF A public resource directory which contains public resource folder. WEB-INF folder consists of 1. web.xml 2. classes directory 3. lib directory |
| Q: | What are the common mechanisms used for session tracking? |
| A: | Cookies SSL sessions URL- rewriting |
| Q: | Explain ServletContext. |
| A: | ServletContext interface is a window for a servlet to view it's environment. A servlet can use this interface to get information such as initialization parameters for the web applicationor servlet container's version. Every web application has one and only one ServletContext and is accessible to all active resource of that application. |
| Q: | What is preinitialization of a servlet? |
| A: | A container doesnot initialize the servlets ass soon as it starts up, it initializes a servlet when it receives a request for that servlet first time. This is called lazy loading. The servlet specification defines the <load-on-startup> element, which can be specified in the deployment descriptor to make the servlet container load and initialize the servlet as soon as it starts up. The process of loading a servlet before any request comes in is called preloading or preinitializing a servlet. |
| Q: | What is the difference between Difference between doGet() and doPost()? |
| A: | A doGet() method is limited with 2k of data to be sent, and doPost() method doesn't have this limitation. A request string for doGet() looks like the following: http://www.allapplabs.com/svt1?p1=v1&p2=v2&...&pN=vN doPost() method call doesn't need a long text tail after a servlet name in a request. All parameters are stored in a request itself, not in a request string, and it's impossible to guess the data transmitted to a servlet only looking at a request string. |
| Q: | What is the difference between HttpServlet and GenericServlet? |
| A: | A GenericServlet has a service() method aimed to handle requests. HttpServlet extends GenericServlet and adds support for doGet(), doPost(), doHead() methods (HTTP 1.0) plus doPut(), doOptions(), doDelete(), doTrace() methods (HTTP 1.1). Both these classes are abstract. |
| Q: | What are the different kinds of enterprise beans? | |
| A: | Different kind of enterrise beans are Stateless session bean, Stateful session bean, Entity bean, Message-driven bean........... | |
| Q: | What is Session Bean? | |
| A: | A session bean is a non-persistent object that implements some business logic running on the server. One way to think of a session object........... | |
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| Q: | What is Entity Bean? | |
| A: | The entity bean is used to represent data in the database. It provides an object-oriented interface to ........... | |
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| Q: | What are the methods of Entity Bean? | |
| A: | An entity bean consists of 4 groups of methods, create methods........... | |
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| Q: | What is the difference between Container-Managed Persistent (CMP) bean and Bean-Managed Persistent(BMP) ? | |
| A: | Container-managed persistence (CMP) and bean-managed persistence (BMP). With CMP, the container manages the persistence of the entity bean............ | |
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| Q: | What are the callback methods in Entity beans? | |
| A: | Callback methods allows the container to notify the bean of events in its life cycle. The callback methods are defined in the javax.ejb.EntityBean interface............ | |
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| Q: | What is software architecture of EJB? | |
| A: | Session and Entity EJBs consist of 4 and 5 parts respectively, a remote interface........... | |
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| Q: | Can Entity Beans have no create() methods? | |
| A: | Yes. In some cases the data is inserted NOT using Java application,........... | |
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| Q: | What is bean managed transaction? | |
| A: | If a developer doesn't want a Container to manage transactions, it's possible to implement all database operations manually........... | |
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| Q: | What are transaction isolation levels in EJB? |
| A: | Transaction_read_uncommitted , Transaction_read_committed , Transaction_repeatable_read........... |
| Q: | How EJB Invocation happens? |
| A: | Step 1: Retrieve Home Object reference from Naming Service via JNDI. step 2: Return Home Object reference to the client. step 3: Create me a new EJB Object through Home Object interface. step 4: Create EJB Object from the Ejb Object step 5: Return EJB Object reference to the client. step 6: Invoke business method using EJB Object reference. step 7: Delegate request to Bean (Enterprise Bean). |
| Q: | Is it possible to share an HttpSession between a JSP and EJB? What happens when I change a value in the HttpSession from inside an EJB? |
| A: | You can pass the HttpSession as parameter to an EJB method, only if all objects in session are serializable.This has to be consider as ?passed-by-value", that means that it?s read-only in the EJB. If anything is altered from inside the EJB, it won?t be reflected back to the HttpSession of the Servlet Container.The ?pass-by-reference? can be used between EJBs Remote Interfaces, as they are remote references. While it IS possible to pass an HttpSession as a parameter to an EJB object, it is considered to be ?bad practice ? in terms of object oriented design. This is because you are creating an unnecessary coupling between back-end objects (ejbs) and front-end objects (HttpSession). Create a higher-level of abstraction for your ejb?s api. Rather than passing the whole, fat, HttpSession (which carries with it a bunch of http semantics), create a class that acts as a value object (or structure) that holds all the data you need to pass back and forth between front-end/back-end. Consider the case where your ejb needs to support a non-http-based client. This higher level of abstraction will be flexible enough to support it. |
| Q: | The EJB container implements the EJBHome and EJBObject classes. For every request from a unique client, does the container create a separate instance of the generated EJBHome and EJBObject classes? |
| A: | The EJB container maintains an instance pool. The container uses these instances for the EJB Home reference irrespective of the client request. while refering the EJB Object classes the container creates a separate instance for each client request. The instance pool maintainence is up to the implementation of the container. If the container provides one, it is available otherwise it is not mandatory for the provider to implement it. Having said that, yes most of the container providers implement the pooling functionality to increase the performance of the application server. The way it is implemented is again up to the implementer. |
| Q: | Can the primary key in the entity bean be a Java primitive type such as int? |
| A: | The primary key can't be a primitive type--use the primitive wrapper classes, instead. For example, you can use java.lang.Integer as the primary key class, but not int (it has to be a class, not a primitive) |
| Q: | Can you control when passivation occurs? |
| A: | The developer, according to the specification, cannot directly control when passivation occurs. Although for Stateful Session Beans, the container cannot passivate an instance that is inside a transaction. So using transactions can be a a strategy to control passivation. The ejbPassivate() method is called during passivation, so the developer has control over what to do during this exercise and can implement the require optimized logic. Some EJB containers, such as BEA WebLogic, provide the ability to tune the container to minimize passivation calls. Taken from the WebLogic 6.0 DTD -"The passivation-strategy can be either "default" or "transaction". With the default setting the container will attempt to keep a working set of beans in the cache. With the "transaction" setting, the container will passivate the bean after every transaction (or method call for a non-transactional invocation). |
| Q: | What is the advantage of using Entity bean for database operations, over directly using JDBC API to do database operations? When would I use one over the other? |
| A: | Entity Beans actually represents the data in a database. It is not that Entity Beans replaces JDBC API. There are two types of Entity Beans Container Managed and Bean Mananged. In Container Managed Entity Bean - Whenever the instance of the bean is created the container automatically retrieves the data from the DB/Persistance storage and assigns to the object variables in bean for user to manipulate or use them. For this the developer needs to map the fields in the database to the variables in deployment descriptor files (which varies for each vendor). In the Bean Managed Entity Bean - The developer has to specifically make connection, retrive values, assign them to the objects in the ejbLoad() which will be called by the container when it instatiates a bean object. Similarly in the ejbStore() the container saves the object values back the the persistance storage. ejbLoad and ejbStore are callback methods and can be only invoked by the container. Apart from this, when you use Entity beans you dont need to worry about database transaction handling, database connection pooling etc. which are taken care by the ejb container. But in case of JDBC you have to explicitly do the above features. what suresh told is exactly perfect. ofcourse, this comes under the database transations, but i want to add this. the great thing about the entity beans of container managed, whenever the connection is failed during the transaction processing, the database consistancy is mantained automatically. the container writes the data stored at persistant storage of the entity beans to the database again to provide the database consistancy. where as in jdbc api, we, developers has to do manually. |
| Q: | What is EJB QL? |
| A: | EJB QL is a Query Language provided for navigation across a network of enterprise beans and dependent objects defined by means of container managed persistence. EJB QL is introduced in the EJB 2.0 specification. The EJB QL query language defines finder methods for entity beans with container managed persistenceand is portable across containers and persistence managers. EJB QL is used for queries of two types of finder methods: Finder methods that are defined in the home interface of an entity bean and which return entity objects. Select methods, which are not exposed to the client, but which are used by the Bean Provider to select persistent values that are maintained by the Persistence Manager or to select entity objects that are related to the entity bean on which the query is defined. |
| Q: | Brief description about local interfaces? |
| A: | EEJB was originally designed around remote invocation using the Java Remote Method Invocation (RMI) mechanism, and later extended to support to standard CORBA transport for these calls using RMI/IIOP. This design allowed for maximum flexibility in developing applications without consideration for the deployment scenario, and was a strong feature in support of a goal of component reuse in J2EE. Many developers are using EJBs locally -- that is, some or all of their EJB calls are between beans in a single container. With this feedback in mind, the EJB 2.0 expert group has created a local interface mechanism. The local interface may be defined for a bean during development, to allow streamlined calls to the bean if a caller is in the same container. This does not involve the overhead involved with RMI like marshalling etc. This facility will thus improve the performance of applications in which co-location is planned. Local interfaces also provide the foundation for container-managed relationships among entity beans with container-managed persistence. |
| Q: | What are the special design care that must be taken when you work with local interfaces? |
| A: | EIt is important to understand that the calling semantics of local interfaces are different from those of remote interfaces. For example, remote interfaces pass parameters using call-by-value semantics, while local interfaces use call-by-reference. This means that in order to use local interfaces safely, application developers need to carefully consider potential deployment scenarios up front, then decide which interfaces can be local and which remote, and finally, develop the application code with these choices in mind. While EJB 2.0 local interfaces are extremely useful in some situations, the long-term costs of these choices, especially when changing requirements and component reuse are taken into account, need to be factored into the design decision. |
| Q: | What happens if remove( ) is never invoked on a session bean? |
| A: | In case of a stateless session bean it may not matter if we call or not as in both cases nothing is done. The number of beans in cache is managed by the container. In case of stateful session bean, the bean may be kept in cache till either the session times out, in which case the bean is removed or when there is a requirement for memory in which case the data is cached and the bean is sent to free pool. |
| Q: | What is the difference between Message Driven Beans and Stateless Session beans? |
| A: | In several ways, the dynamic creation and allocation of message-driven bean instances mimics the behavior of stateless session EJB instances, which exist only for the duration of a particular method call. However, message-driven beans are different from stateless session EJBs (and other types of EJBs) in several significant ways: Message-driven beans process multiple JMS messages asynchronously, rather than processing a serialized sequence of method calls. Message-driven beans have no home or remote interface, and therefore cannot be directly accessed by internal or external clients. Clients interact with message-driven beans only indirectly, by sending a message to a JMS Queue or Topic. Note: Only the container directly interacts with a message-driven bean by creating bean instances and passing JMS messages to those instances as necessary. The Container maintains the entire lifecycle of a message-driven bean; instances cannot be created or removed as a result of client requests or other API calls. |
| Q: | How can I call one EJB from inside of another EJB? |
| A: | EJBs can be clients of other EJBs. It just works. Use JNDI to locate the Home Interface of the other bean, then acquire an instance reference, and so forth. |
| Q: | What is an EJB Context? |
| A: | EJBContext is an interface that is implemented by the container, and it is also a part of the bean-container contract. Entity beans use a subclass of EJBContext called EntityContext. Session beans use a subclass called SessionContext. These EJBContext objects provide the bean class with information about its container, the client using the bean and the bean itself. They also provide other functions. See the API docs and the spec for more details. |
| Q: | What is JMS? |
| A: | JMS is an acronym used for Java Messaging Service. It is Java's answer to creating software using asynchronous messaging. It is one of the official specifications of the J2EE technologies and is a key technology. |
| Q: | How JMS is different from RPC? |
| A: | In RPC the method invoker waits for the method to finish execution and return the control back to the invoker. Thus it is completely synchronous in nature. While in JMS the message sender just sends the message to the destination and continues it's own processing. The sender does not wait for the receiver to respond. This is asynchronous behavior. |
| Q: | What are the advantages of JMS? |
| A: | JMS is asynchronous in nature. Thus not all the pieces need to be up all the time for the application to function as a whole. Even if the receiver is down the MOM will store the messages on it's behalf and will send them once it comes back up. Thus at least a part of application can still function as there is no blocking. |
| Q: | Are you aware of any major JMS products available in the market? |
| A: | IBM's MQ Series is one of the most popular product used as Message Oriented Middleware. Some of the other products are SonicMQ, iBus etc. Weblogic application server also comes with built in support for JMS messaging. |
| Q: | What are the different types of messages available in the JMS API? |
| A: | Message, TextMessage, BytesMessage, StreamMessage, ObjectMessage, MapMessage are the different messages available in the JMS API. |
| Q: | What are the different messaging paradigms JMS supports? |
| A: | Publish and Subscribe i.e. pub/suc and Point to Point i.e. p2p. |
| Q: | What is the difference between topic and queue? |
| A: | A topic is typically used for one to many messaging i.e. it supports publish subscribe model of messaging. While queue is used for one-to-one messaging i.e. it supports Point to Point Messaging. |
| Q: | What is the role of JMS in enterprise solution development? |
| A: | JMS is typically used in the following scenarios 1. Enterprise Application Integration: - Where a legacy application is integrated with a new application via messaging. 2. B2B or Business to Business: - Businesses can interact with each other via messaging because JMS allows organizations to cooperate without tightly coupling their business systems. 3. Geographically dispersed units: - JMS can ensure safe exchange of data amongst the geographically dispersed units of an organization. 4. One to many applications: - The applications that have to push data in packet to huge number of clients in a one-to-many fashion are good candidates for the use JMS. Typical such applications are Auction Sites, Stock Quote Services etc. |
| Q: | What is the use of Message object? |
| A: | Message is a light weight message having only header and properties and no payload. Thus if the received are to be notified abt an event, and no data needs to be exchanged then using Message can be very efficient. |
| Q: | What is the basic difference between Publish Subscribe model and P2P model? |
| A: | Publish Subscribe model is typically used in one-to-many situation. It is unreliable but very fast. P2P model is used in one-to-one situation. It is highly reliable. |
| Q: | What is the use of BytesMessage? |
| A: | BytesMessage contains an array of primitive bytes in it's payload. Thus it can be used for transfer of data between two applications in their native format which may not be compatible with other Message types. It is also useful where JMS is used purely as a transport between two systems and the message payload is opaque to the JMS client. Whenever you store any primitive type, it is converted into it's byte representation and then stored in the payload. There is no boundary line between the different data types stored. Thus you can even read a long as short. This would result in erroneous data and hence it is advisable that the payload be read in the same order and using the same type in which it was created by the sender. |
| Q: | What is the use of StreamMessage? |
| A: | StreamMessage carries a stream of Java primitive types as it's payload. It contains some conveient methods for reading the data stored in the payload. However StreamMessage prevents reading a long value as short, something that is allwed in case of BytesMessage. This is so because the StreamMessage also writes the type information alonwgith the value of the primitive type and enforces a set of strict conversion rules which actually prevents reading of one primitive type as another. |
| Q: | What is the use of TextMessage? |
| A: | TextMessage contains instance of java.lang.String as it's payload. Thus it is very useful for exchanging textual data. It can also be used for exchanging complex character data such as an XML document. |
| Q: | What is the use of ObjectMessage? |
| A: | ObjectMessage contains a Serializable java object as it's payload. Thus it allows exchange of Java objects between applications. This in itself mandates that both the applications be Java applications. The consumer of the message must typecast the object received to it's appropriate type. Thus the consumer should before hand know the actual type of the object sent by the sender. Wrong type casting would result in ClassCastException. Moreover the class definition of the object set in the payload should be available on both the machine, the sender as well as the consumer. If the class definition is not available in the consumer machine, an attempt to type cast would result in ClassNotFoundException. Some of the MOMs might support dynamic loading of the desired class over the network, but the JMS specification does not mandate this behavior and would be a value added service if provided by your vendor. And relying on any such vendor specific functionality would hamper the portability of your application. Most of the time the class need to be put in the classpath of both, the sender and the consumer, manually by the developer. |
| Q: | What is the use of MapMessage? |
| A: | A MapMessage carries name-value pair as it's payload. Thus it's payload is similar to the java.util.Properties object of Java. The values can be Java primitives or their wrappers. |
| Q: | What is the difference between BytesMessage and StreamMessage?? |
| A: | BytesMessage stores the primitive data types by converting them to their byte representation. Thus the message is one contiguous stream of bytes. While the StreamMessage maintains a boundary between the different data types stored because it also stores the type information along with the value of the primitive being stored. BytesMessage allows data to be read using any type. Thus even if your payload contains a long value, you can invoke a method to read a short and it will return you something. It will not give you a semantically correct data but the call will succeed in reading the first two bytes of data. This is strictly prohibited in the StreamMessage. It maintains the type information of the data being stored and enforces strict conversion rules on the data being read. |
| Q: | What is SQL? |
| A: | SQL stands for 'Structured Query Language'. |
| Q: | What is SELECT statement? |
| A: | The SELECT statement lets you select a set of values from a table in a database. The values selected from the database table would depend on the various conditions that are specified in the SQL query. |
| Q: | How can you compare a part of the name rather than the entire name? |
| A: | SELECT * FROM people WHERE empname LIKE '%ab%' Would return a recordset with records consisting empname the sequence 'ab' in empname . |
| Q: | What is the INSERT statement? |
| A: | The INSERT statement lets you insert information into a database. |
| Q: | How do you delete a record from a database? |
| A: | Use the DELETE statement to remove records or any particular column values from a database. |
| Q: | How could I get distinct entries from a table? |
| A: | The SELECT statement in conjunction with DISTINCT lets you select a set of distinct values from a table in a database. The values selected from the database table would of course depend on the various conditions that are specified in the SQL query. Example SELECT DISTINCT empname FROM emptable |
| Q: | How to get the results of a Query sorted in any order? |
| A: | You can sort the results and return the sorted results to your program by using ORDER BY keyword thus saving you the pain of carrying out the sorting yourself. The ORDER BY keyword is used for sorting. SELECT empname, age, city FROM emptable ORDER BY empname |
| Q: | How can I find the total number of records in a table? |
| A: | You could use the COUNT keyword , example SELECT COUNT(*) FROM emp WHERE age>40 |
| Q: | What is GROUP BY? |
| A: | The GROUP BY keywords have been added to SQL because aggregate functions (like SUM) return the aggregate of all column values every time they are called. Without the GROUP BY functionality, finding the sum for each individual group of column values was not possible. |
| Q: | What is the difference among "dropping a table", "truncating a table" and "deleting all records" from a table. |
| A: | Dropping : (Table structure + Data are deleted), Invalidates the dependent objects ,Drops the indexes Truncating: (Data alone deleted), Performs an automatic commit, Faster than delete Delete : (Data alone deleted), Doesn’t perform automatic commit |
| Q: | What are the Large object types suported by Oracle? |
| A: | Blob and Clob. |
| Q: | Difference between a "where" clause and a "having" clause. |
| A: | Having clause is used only with group functions whereas Where is not used with. |
| Q: | What's the difference between a primary key and a unique key? |
| A: | Both primary key and unique enforce uniqueness of the column on which they are defined. But by default primary key creates a clustered index on the column, where are unique creates a nonclustered index by default. Another major difference is that, primary key doesn't allow NULLs, but unique key allows one NULL only. |
| Q: | What are cursors? Explain different types of cursors. What are the disadvantages of cursors? How can you avoid cursors? |
| A: | Cursors allow row-by-row prcessing of the resultsets. Types of cursors: Static, Dynamic, Forward-only, Keyset-driven. See books online for more information. Disadvantages of cursors: Each time you fetch a row from the cursor, it results in a network roundtrip, where as a normal SELECT query makes only one rowundtrip, however large the resultset is. Cursors are also costly because they require more resources and temporary storage (results in more IO operations). Furthere, there are restrictions on the SELECT statements that can be used with some types of cursors. Most of the times, set based operations can be used instead of cursors. |
| Q: | What are triggers? How to invoke a trigger on demand? |
| A: | Triggers are special kind of stored procedures that get executed automatically when an INSERT, UPDATE or DELETE operation takes place on a table. Triggers can't be invoked on demand. They get triggered only when an associated action (INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE) happens on the table on which they are defined. Triggers are generally used to implement business rules, auditing. Triggers can also be used to extend the referential integrity checks, but wherever possible, use constraints for this purpose, instead of triggers, as constraints are much faster. |
| Q: | What is a join and explain different types of joins. |
| A: | Joins are used in queries to explain how different tables are related. Joins also let you select data from a table depending upon data from another table. Types of joins: INNER JOINs, OUTER JOINs, CROSS JOINs. OUTER JOINs are further classified as LEFT OUTER JOINS, RIGHT OUTER JOINS and FULL OUTER JOINS. |
| Q: | What is a self join? |
| A: | Self join is just like any other join, except that two instances of the same table will be joined in the query. |