Core Java Interview Questions

• 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 to find corresponding method in in the actual class. Abstract classes are fast.

Similarities:

• Neither Abstract classes or Interface can be instantiated.

Question: How to define an Abstract class?
Answer: A class containing abstract method is called Abstract class. An Abstract class can't be instantiated.
Example of Abstract class:
abstract class testAbstractClass {
protected String myString;
public String getMyString() {
return myString;
}
public abstract string anyAbstractFunction();
}
Question: How to define an Interface?
Answer: In Java Interface defines the methods but does not implement them. Interface can include constants. A class that implements the interfaces is bound to implement all the methods defined in Interface.
Emaple of Interface:

public interface sampleInterface {
public void functionOne();

public long CONSTANT_ONE = 1000;
}
Question: Explain the user defined Exceptions?
Answer: User defined Exceptions are the separate Exception classes defined by the user for specific purposed. An user defined can created by simply sub-classing it to the Exception class. This allows custom exceptions to be generated (using throw) and caught in the same way as normal exceptions.
Example:
class myCustomException extends Exception {
// The class simply has to exist to be an exception
}
Question: Explain the new Features of JDBC 2.0 Core API?
Answer: The JDBC 2.0 API includes the complete JDBC API, which includes both core and Optional Package API, and provides inductrial-strength database computing capabilities.
New Features in JDBC 2.0 Core API:

• Scrollable result sets- using new methods in the ResultSet interface allows programmatically move the to particular row or to a position relative to its current position
• JDBC 2.0 Core API provides the Batch Updates functionality to the java applications.
• Java applications can now use the ResultSet.updateXXX methods.
• New data types - interfaces mapping the SQL3 data types
• Custom mapping of user-defined types (UTDs)
• Miscellaneous features, including performance hints, the use of character streams, full precision for java.math.BigDecimal values, additional security, and support for time zones in date, time, and timestamp values.

Question: Explain garbage collection?
Answer: Garbage collection is one of the most important feature of Java. Garbage collection is also called automatic memory management as JVM automatically removes the unused variables/objects (value is null) from the memory. User program cann't directly free the object from memory, instead it is the job of the garbage collector to automatically free the objects that are no longer referenced by a program. Every class inherits finalize() method from java.lang.Object, the finalize() method is called by garbage collector when it determines no more references to the object exists. In Java, it is good idea to explicitly assign null into a variable when no more in use. I Java on calling System.gc() and Runtime.gc(), JVM tries to recycle the unused objects, but there is no guarantee when all the objects will garbage collected.
Question: How you can force the garbage collection?
Answer: Garbage collection automatic process and can't be forced.
Question: What is OOPS?
Answer: OOP is the common abbreviation for Object-Oriented Programming.
Question: Describe the principles of OOPS.
Answer: There are three main principals of oops which are called Polymorphism, Inheritance and Encapsulation.
Question: Explain the Encapsulation principle.
Answer: Encapsulation is a process of binding or wrapping the data and the codes that operates on the data into a single entity. This keeps the data safe from outside interface and misuse. One way to think about encapsulation is as a protective wrapper that prevents code and data from being arbitrarily accessed by other code defined outside the wrapper.
Question: Explain the Inheritance principle.
Answer: Inheritance is the process by which one object acquires the properties of another object.
Question: Explain the Polymorphism principle.
Answer: The meaning of Polymorphism is something like one name many forms. Polymorphism enables one entity to be used as as general category for different types of actions. The specific action is determined by the exact nature of the situation. The concept of polymorphism can be explained as "one interface, multiple methods".
Question: Explain the different forms of Polymorphism.
Answer: From a practical programming viewpoint, polymorphism exists in three distinct forms in Java:

• Method overloading
• Method overriding through inheritance
• Method overriding through the Java interface

Question: What are Access Specifiers available in Java?
Answer: Access specifiers are keywords that determines the type of access to the member of a class. These are:

• Public
• Protected
• Private
• Defaults

Question: Describe the wrapper classes in Java.
Answer: Wrapper class is wrapper around a primitive data type. An instance of a wrapper class contains, or wraps, a primitive value of the corresponding type.
Following table lists the primitive types and the corresponding wrapper classes:

Question: Read the following program:
public class test {
public static void main(String [] args) {
int x = 3;
int y = 1;
if (x = y)
System.out.println("Not equal");
else
System.out.println("Equal");
}
}
What is the result?
A. The output is “Equal”
B. The output in “Not Equal”
C. An error at " if (x = y)" causes compilation to fall.
D. The program executes but no output is show on console.
Answer: C

Question: what is the class variables ?
Answer: When we create a number of objects of the same class, then each object will share a common copy of variables. That means that there is only one copy per class, no matter how many objects are created from it. Class variables or static variables are declared with the static keyword in a class, but mind it that it should be declared outside outside a class. These variables are stored in static memory. Class variables are mostly used for constants, variable that never change its initial value. Static variables are always called by the class name. This variable is created when the program starts i.e. it is created before the instance is created of class by using new operator and gets destroyed when the programs stops. The scope of the class variable is same a instance variable. The class variable can be defined anywhere at class level with the keyword static. It initial value is same as instance variable. When the class variable is defined as int then it's initial value is by default zero, when declared boolean its default value is false and null for object references. Class variables are associated with the class, rather than with any object.
Question: What is the difference between the instanceof and getclass, these two are same or not ?
Answer: instanceof is a operator, not a function while getClass is a method of java.lang.Object class. Consider a condition where we use
if(o.getClass().getName().equals("java.lang.Math")){ }
This method only checks if the classname we have passed is equal to java.lang.Math. The class java.lang.Math is loaded by the bootstrap ClassLoader. This class is an abstract class.This class loader is responsible for loading classes. Every Class object contains a reference to the ClassLoader that defines. getClass() method returns the runtime class of an object. It fetches the java instance of the given fully qualified type name. The code we have written is not necessary, because we should not compare getClass.getName(). The reason behind it is that if the two different class loaders load the same class but for the JVM, it will consider both classes as different classes so, we can't compare their names. It can only gives the implementing class but can't compare a interface, but instanceof operator can.
The instanceof operator compares an object to a specified type. We can use it to test if an object is an instance of a class, an instance of a subclass, or an instance of a class that implements a particular interface. We should try to use instanceof operator in place of getClass() method. Remember instanceof opeator and getClass are not same. Try this example, it will help you to better understand the difference between the two.
Interface one{
}

Class Two implements one {
}
Class Three implements one {
}

public class Test {
public static void main(String args[]) {
one test1 = new Two();
one test2 = new Three();
System.out.println(test1 instanceof one); //true
System.out.println(test2 instanceof one); //true
System.out.println(Test.getClass().equals(test2.getClass())); //false
}
}

Jakarta Struts Interview Questions

Q: What is Jakarta Struts Framework?
A: Jakarta Struts is open source implementation of MVC (Model-View-Controller) pattern for the development of web based applications. Jakarta Struts is robust architecture and can be used for the development of application of any size. Struts framework makes it much easier to design scalable, reliable Web applications with Java.
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: Write code of any Action Class?
A: Here is the code of Action Class that returns the ActionForward object.
TestAction.java

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.

Struts Interview Questions

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:

• Implement the Serializable interface.
• Make sure that instance-level, locally defined state is serialized properly.
• Make sure that superclass state is serialized properly.
• 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.
function set(target) {document.forms[0].dispatch.value=target;} 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 Questions

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


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.

JSP Interview Questions

Question: What do you understand by JSP Actions?
Answer: JSP actions are XML tags that direct the server to use existing components or control the behavior of the JSP engine. JSP Actions consist of a typical (XML-based) prefix of "jsp" followed by a colon, followed by the action name followed by one or more attribute parameters.
There are six JSP Actions:

Question: What is the difference between and <%@ include file = ... >?
Answer: Both the tag includes the information from one page in another. The differences are as follows:
: This is like a function call from one jsp to another jsp. It is executed ( the included page is executed and the generated html content is included in the content of calling jsp) each time the client page is accessed by the client. This approach is useful to for modularizing the web application. If the included file changed then the new content will be included in the output.

<%@ include file = ... >: In this case the content of the included file is textually embedded in the page that have <%@ include file=".."> directive. In this case in the included file changes, the changed content will not included in the output. This approach is used when the code from one jsp file required to include in multiple jsp files.
Question: What is the difference between and response.sendRedirect(url),?.
Answer: The element forwards the request object containing the client request information from one JSP file to another file. The target file can be an HTML file, another JSP file, or a servlet, as long as it is in the same application context as the forwarding JSP file.
sendRedirect sends HTTP temporary redirect response to the browser, and browser creates a new request to go the redirected page. The response.sendRedirect kills the session variables.
Question: Identify the advantages of JSP over Servlet.

a) Embedding of Java code in HTML pages
b) Platform independence
c) Creation of database-driven Web applications
d) Server-side programming capabilities

Answer :- Embedding of Java code in HTML pages
Write the following code for a JSP page:
<%@ page language = "java" %>

<%

PrintWriter print = request.getWriter();
print.println("Welcome");

%>

Suppose you access this JSP file, Find out your answer.
a) A blank page will be displayed.
b) A page with the text Welcome is displayed
c) An exception will be thrown because the implicit out object is not used
d) An exception will be thrown because PrintWriter can be used in servlets only

Answer :- A page with the text Welcome is displayed
Question: What are implicit Objects available to the JSP Page?
Answer: Implicit objects are the objects available to the JSP page. These objects are created by Web container and contain information related to a particular request, page, or application. The JSP implicit objects are:

Question: What are all the different scope values for the tag?
Answer: tag is used to use any java object in the jsp page. Here are the scope values for tag:
a) page
b) request
c) session and
d) application
Question: What is JSP Output Comments?
Answer: JSP Output Comments are the comments that can be viewed in the HTML source file.
Example:

and

Question: What is expression in JSP?
Answer: Expression tag is used to insert Java values directly into the output. Syntax for the Expression tag is:
<%= expression %>
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. The following expression tag displays time on the output:
<%=new java.util.Date()%>
Question: What types of comments are available in the JSP?
Answer: There are two types of comments are allowed in the JSP. These are hidden and output comments. A hidden comments does not appear in the generated output in the html, while output comments appear in the generated output.
Example of hidden comment:
<%-- This is hidden comment --%>
Example of output comment:

Question: What is JSP declaration?
Answer: JSP Decleratives are the JSP tag used to declare variables. Declaratives are enclosed in the <%! %> tag and ends in semi-colon. You declare variables and functions in the declaration tag and can use anywhere in the JSP. Here is the example of declaratives:
<%@page contentType="text/html" %>
<%!
int cnt=0;
private int getCount(){
//increment cnt and return the value
cnt++;
return cnt;
}
%>
Values of Cnt are:
<%=getCount()%>

Question: What is JSP Scriptlet?
Answer: JSP Scriptlet is jsp tag which is used to enclose java code in the JSP pages. Scriptlets begins with <% tag and ends with %> tag. Java code written inside scriptlet executes every time the JSP is invoked.
Example:
<%
//java codes
String userName=null;
userName=request.getParameter("userName");
%>
Question: What are the life-cycle methods of JSP?
Answer: Life-cycle methods of the JSP are:
a) jspInit(): The container calls the jspInit() to initialize the servlet instance. It is called before any other method, and is called only once for a servlet instance.
b)_jspService(): The container calls the _jspservice() for each request and it passes the request and the response objects. _jspService() method cann't be overridden.
c) jspDestroy(): The container calls this when its instance is about to destroyed.
The jspInit() and jspDestroy() methods can be overridden within a JSP page.

JSP Interview Questions -2

Question: What is JSP Custom tags?
Answer: JSP Custom tags are user defined JSP language element. JSP custom tags are user defined tags that can encapsulate common functionality. For example you can write your own tag to access the database and performing database operations. You can also write custom tag for encapsulate both simple and complex behaviors in an easy to use syntax and greatly simplify the readability of JSP pages.

Question: What is JSP?
Answer: JavaServer Pages (JSP) technology is the Java platform technology for delivering dynamic content to web clients in a portable, secure and well-defined way. The JavaServer Pages specification extends the Java Servlet API to provide web application developers
Question: What is the role of JSP in MVC Model?
Answer: JSP is mostly used to develop the user interface, It plays are role of View in the MVC Model.
Question: What do you understand by context initialization parameters?
Answer: The context-param element contains the declaration of a web application's servlet context initialization parameters.

name
value

The Context Parameters page lets you manage parameters that are accessed through the ServletContext.getInitParameterNames and ServletContext.getInitParameter methods.
Question: Can you extend JSP technology?
Answer: JSP technology lets the programmer to extend the jsp to make the programming more easier. JSP can be extended and custom actions and tag libraries can be developed.
Question: What do you understand by JSP translation?
Answer: JSP translators generate standard Java code for a JSP page implementation class. This class is essentially a servlet class wrapped with features for JSP functionality.
Question: What you can stop the browser to cash your page?
Answer: Instead of deleting a cache, you can force the browser not to catch the page.
<%
response.setHeader("pragma","no-cache");//HTTP 1.1
response.setHeader("Cache-Control","no-cache");
response.setHeader("Cache-Control","no-store");
response.addDateHeader("Expires", -1);
response.setDateHeader("max-age", 0);

//response.setIntHeader ("Expires", -1); //prevents caching at the proxy server
response.addHeader("cache-Control", "private");

%>
put the above code in your page.
Question: What you will handle the runtime exception in your jsp page?
Answer: The errorPage attribute of the page directive can be used to catch run-time exceptions automatically and then forwarded to an error processing page.
For example:
<%@ page errorPage="customerror.jsp" %>
above code forwards the request to "customerror.jsp" page if an uncaught exception is encountered during request processing. Within "customerror.jsp", you must indicate that it is an error-processing page, via the directive: <%@ page isErrorPage="true" %>.

J2EE Interview Questions

Question: What is J2EE?
Answer: J2EE Stands for Java 2 Enterprise Edition. J2EE is an environment for developing and deploying enterprise applications. J2EE specification is defined by Sun Microsystems Inc. The J2EE platform is one of the best platform for the development and deployment of enterprise applications. The J2EE platform is consists of a set of services, application programming interfaces (APIs), and protocols, which provides the functionality necessary for developing multi-tiered, web-based applications. You can download the J2EE SDK and development tools from http://java.sun.com/.

Question: What do you understand by a J2EE module?
Answer: A J2EE module is a software unit that consists of one or more J2EE components of the same container type along with one deployment descriptor of that type. J2EE specification defines four types of modules:
a) EJB
b) Web
c) application client and
d) resource adapter

In the J2EE applications modules can be deployed as stand-alone units. Modules can also be assembled into J2EE applications.
Question: Tell me something about J2EE component?
Answer: J2EE component is a self-contained functional software unit supported by a container and configurable at deployment time. The J2EE specification defines the following J2EE components:

• Application clients and applets are components that run on the client.
• Java servlet and JavaServer Pages (JSP) technology components are Web components that run on the server.
• Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) components (enterprise beans) are business components that run on the server. J2EE components are written in the Java programming language and are compiled in the same way as any program in the language. The difference between J2EE components and "standard" Java classes is that J2EE components are assembled into a J2EE application, verified to be well formed and in compliance with the J2EE specification, and deployed to production, where they are run and managed by the J2EE server or client container.

Source: J2EE v1.4 Glossar
Question: What are the contents of web module?
Answer: A web module may contain:
a) JSP files
b) Java classes
c) gif and html files and
d) web component deployment descriptors
Question: Differentiate between .ear, .jar and .war files.
Answer: These files are simply zipped file using java jar tool. These files are created for different purposes. Here is the description of these files:
.jar files: These files are with the .jar extenstion. The .jar files contains the libraries, resources and accessories files like property files.
.war files: These files are with the .war extension. The war file contains the web application that can be deployed on the any servlet/jsp container. The .war file contains jsp, html, javascript and other files for necessary for the development of web applications.
.ear files: The .ear file contains the EJB modules of the application.
Question: What is the difference between Session Bean and Entity Bean?
Answer:
Session Bean: Session is one of the EJBs and it represents a single client inside the Application Server. Stateless session is easy to develop and its efficient. As compare to entity beans session beans require few server resources.

A session bean is similar to an interactive session and is not shared; it can have only one client, in the same way that an interactive session can have only one user. A session bean is not persistent and it is destroyed once the session terminates.

Entity Bean: An entity bean represents persistent global data from the database. Entity beans data are stored into database.
Question: Why J2EE is suitable for the development distributed multi-tiered enterprise applications?
Answer: The J2EE platform consists of multi-tiered distributed application model. J2EE applications allows the developers to design and implement the business logic into components according to business requirement. J2EE architecture allows the development of multi-tired applications and the developed applications can be installed on different machines depending on the tier in the multi-tiered J2EE environment . The J2EE application parts are:

a) Client-tier components run on the client machine.
b) Web-tier components run on the J2EE server.
c) Business-tier components run on the J2EE server and the
d) Enterprise information system (EIS)-tier software runs on the EIS servers
Question: Why do understand by a container?
Answer: Normally, thin-client multi-tiered applications are hard to write because they involve many lines of intricate code to handle transaction and state management, multithreading, resource pooling, and other complex low-level details. The component-based and platform-independent J2EE architecture makes J2EE applications easy to write because business logic is organized into reusable components. In addition, the J2EE server provides underlying services in the form of a container for every component type. Because you do not have to develop these services yourself, you are free to concentrate on solving the business problem at hand (Source: http://java.sun.com/j2ee/1.3/docs/tutorial/doc/Overview4.html ).

In short containers are the interface between a component and the low-level platform specific functionality that supports the component. The application like Web, enterprise bean, or application client component must be assembled and deployed on the J2EE container before executing.
Question: What are the services provided by a container?
Answer: The services provided by container are as follows:
a) Transaction management for the bean
b) Security for the bean
c) Persistence of the bean
d) Remote access to the bean
e) Lifecycle management of the bean
f) Database-connection pooling
g) Instance pooling for the bean
Question: What are types of J2EE clients?
Answer: J2EE clients are the software that access the services components installed on the J2EE container. Following are the J2EE clients:
a) Applets
b) Java-Web Start clients
c) Wireless clients
d) Web applications
Question: What is Deployment Descriptor?
Answer: A deployment descriptor is simply an XML(Extensible Markup Language) file with the extension of .xml. Deployment descriptor describes the component deployment settings. Application servers reads the deployment descriptor to deploy the components contained in the deployment unit. For example ejb-jar.xml file is used to describe the setting of the EJBs.

Question: What do you understand by JTA and JTS?
Answer: JTA stands for Java Transaction API and JTS stands for Java Transaction Service. JTA provides a standard interface which allows the developers to demarcate transactions in a manner that is independent of the transaction manager implementation. The J2EE SDK uses the JTA transaction manager to implement the transaction. The code developed by developers does not calls the JTS methods directly, but only invokes the JTA methods. Then JTA internally invokes the JTS routines. JTA is a high level transaction interface used by the application code to control the transaction.

Question: What is JAXP?
Answer: The Java API for XML Processing (JAXP) enables applications to parse and transform XML documents independent of a particular XML processing implementation. JAXP or Java API for XML Parsing is an optional API provided by Javasoft. It provides basic functionality for reading, manipulating, and generating XML documents through pure Java APIs. It is a thin and lightweight API that provides a standard way to seamlessly integrate any XML-compliant parser with a Java application.
More at http://java.sun.com/xml/

Question: What is J2EE Connector architecture?
Answer: J2EE Connector Architecture (JCA) is a Java-based technology solution for connecting application servers and enterprise information systems (EIS) as part of enterprise application integration (EAI) solutions. While JDBC is specifically used to connect Java EE applications to databases, JCA is a more generic architecture for connection to legacy systems (including databases). JCA was developed under the Java Community Process as JSR 16 (JCA 1.0) and JSR 112 (JCA 1.5). As of 2006, the current version of JCA is version 1.5. The J2EE Connector API is used by J2EE tools developers and system integrators to create resource adapters. Home page for J2EE Connector architecture http://java.sun.com/j2ee/connector/.
Question: What is difference between Java Bean and Enterprise Java Bean?
Answer: Java Bean as is a plain java class with member variables and getter setter methods. Java Beans are defined under JavaBeans specification as Java-Based software component model which includes the features like introspection, customization, events, properties and persistence.
Enterprise JavaBeans or EJBs for short are Java-based software components that comply with Java's EJB specification. EJBs are delpoyed on the EJB container and executes in the EJB container. EJB is not that simple, it is used for building distributed applications. Examples of EJB are Session Bean, Entity Bean and Message Driven Bean. EJB is used for server side programming whereas java bean is a client side. Bean is only development but the EJB is developed and then deploy on EJB Container.
Question: What is the difference between JTS and JTA?
Answer: In any J2EE application transaction management is one of the most crucial requirements of the application. Given the complexity of today's business requirements, transaction processing occupies one of the most complex segments of enterprise level distributed applications to build, deploy and maintain. JTS specifies the implementation of a Java transaction manager. JTS specifies the implementation of a Transaction Manager which supports the Java Transaction API (JTA) 1.0 This transaction manager supports the JTA, using which application servers can be built to support transactional Java applications. Internally the JTS implements the Java mapping of the OMG OTS 1.1 specifications. The Java mapping is specified in two packages: org.omg.CosTransactions and org.omg.CosTSPortability. The JTS thus provides a new architecture for transactional application servers and applications, while complying to the OMG OTS 1.1 interfaces internally. This allows the JTA compliant applications to interoperate with other OTS 1.1 complaint applications through the standard IIOP. Java-based applications and Java-based application servers access transaction management functionality via the JTA interfaces. The JTA interacts with a transaction management implementation via JTS. Similarly, the JTS can access resources via the JTA XA interfaces or can access OTS-enabled non-XA resources. JTS implementations can interoperate via CORBA OTS interfaces.

The JTA specifies an architecture for building transactional application servers and defines a set of interfaces for various components of this architecture. The components are: the application, resource managers, and the application server. The JTA specifies standard interfaces for Java-based applications and application servers to interact with transactions, transaction managers, and resource managers JTA transaction management provides a set of interfaces utilized by an application server to manage the beginning and completion of transactions. Transaction synchronization and propagation services are also provided under the domain of transaction management.

In the Java transaction model, the Java application components can conduct transactional operations on JTA compliant resources via the JTS. The JTS acts as a layer over the OTS. The applications can therefore initiate global transactions to include other OTS transaction managers, or participate in global transactions initiated by other OTS compliant transaction managers.
Question: Can Entity Beans have no create() methods?
Answer: Entity Beans can have no create() methods. Entity Beans have no create() method, when entity bean is not used to store the data in the database. In this case entity bean is used to retrieve the data from database.
Question: What are the call back methods in Session bean?
Answer: Callback methods are called by the container to notify the important events to the beans in its life cycle. The callback methods are defined in the javax.ejb.EntityBean interface.The callback methods example are ejbCreate(), ejbPassivate(), and ejbActivate().
Question: What is bean managed transaction?
Answer: In EJB transactions can be maintained by the container or developer can write own code to maintain the transaction. If a developer doesn’t want a Container to manage transactions, developer can write own code to maintain the database transaction.
Question: What are transaction isolation levels in EJB?
Answer: Thre are four levels of transaction isolation are:
* Uncommitted Read
* Committed Read
* Repeatable Read
* Serializable
The four transaction isolation levels and the corresponding behaviors are described below:

************************************************************************************
You can write a runnable Java program which does not have main method at all. This can be done using the static block of the class.

The reason this works is that static initialization blocks get executed as soon as the class is loaded, even before the main method is called. During run time JVM will search for the main method after exiting from this block. If it does not find the main method, it throws an exception. To avoid the exception System.exit(0); statement is used which terminates the program at the end of the static block itself.

class MainMethodNot
{
static
{
System.out.println(“This java program has run without the main method”);
System.exit(0);

}
}