Ab Initio / Data Warehousing / Unix Interview
Questions (Categorized)
1. Ab Initio Questions
• What is the difference between DBC and CFG? When do you use them?
• What compilation errors did you face while executing graphs?
• What is depth_error?
• If network connection is lost during graph execution, does the graph restart from beginning or
continue from where it stopped?
• What are the types of partitioning in Ab Initio?
• What does the unused port in Join component do?
• What is a Multifile System (MFS)?
• Can you create a multifile system on the same server?
• What is a sandbox?
• What are hidden files in sandbox and what does [Link] represent?
• What is Adhoc File System? Give a scenario.
• How did you do version control in Ab Initio?
• What is Enterprise Meta Environment (EME)?
• Difference between Partition by Key and Partition by Round Robin.
• When do you use Partition by Expression?
• What are the different types of parallelism in Ab Initio?
• How does Partition by Key work?
• What error occurs when using Partition by Round Robin with Join?
• Difference between Reformat and Redefine Format component.
• Difference between Replicate and Broadcast component.
• Difference between Gather and Merge component.
• What does Scan component do?
• What does Rollup component do? Give scenario.
• Difference between Lookup and Lookup_local.
• When will you use Join vs Lookup?
• What are Range lookups and Interval lookups?
• What are continuous components?
• When will you use Join with DB component?
• How do you troubleshoot graph performance issues?
• How do you measure graph execution time?
• How do you improve graph performance?
• What is max core and how do you set it?
• How do you separate Header, Detail and Trailer records when no indicator is given?
• If trailer contains count of detail records, how do you validate the file?
• What is layout in Ab Initio?
• Difference between sandbox and project.
• Difference between private sandbox and common sandbox.
• What are plans (Conduct>It)?
• What are switch parameters?
• What is AB_LOCAL() and where is it used?
• What are the different modes of loading using table components (API vs Utility)?
• Explain accumulation and concatenation functions in Rollup.
• What is checkpoint?
• Difference between phase and phase with checkpoint.
• What is key_change function?
• Explain your previous project architecture.
• What components did you use in your project logic?
• What production issues did you face?
2. SQL & Data Warehousing Questions
• What are delta table and master table?
• What are the different dimension tables that you used and some columns in the fact table?
• What is a null key?
• What is normalization in database?
• What are the types of Slowly Changing Dimensions (SCD)?
• What should be loaded first: Fact table or Dimension table?
• What is Junk Dimension?
• What is Conformed Dimension?
• What is Degenerate Dimension?
• What is the difference between Fact and Dimension tables?
• What is the difference between Star Schema and Snowflake Schema?
• What is a Factless Fact Table?
• Is Star Schema normalized?
• Is Data Warehouse normalized?
• Is OLTP normalized?
• Is Fact table normalized?
• Is Dimension table normalized?
• Give SQL query to remove duplicate records from a table.
• Write SQL query to calculate department-wise maximum salary.
• What is the difference between TRUNCATE, DELETE and DROP?
• What is the difference between EXISTS and IN clause?
• How to use TO_CHAR() and TO_DATE() functions?
• How can a table be partitioned in database?
• What is SGA (System Global Area)?
• Write SQL query to get the Nth highest salary from employee table.
• Write SQL query to get 5th to 7th highest salary from employee table.
3. Unix Questions
• What commands do you use when writing wrapper scripts?
• How to get record count of 4th partition of a multifile using Unix?
• How to untorf a file using Unix?
• Filter salary > 300000 using Unix command.
• How to edit a file while reading using Unix?
• How to remove text using sed while reading a file?
• Which protocol does mailx use?
• Combine contents of all .txt files in a directory into one file.
• Explain three examples of awk command.
• Find files not modified in last 30 days.
• Touch files older than 40 days.
• When do we use sed command?
• Count occurrence of a word in a file.
• Filter salary > 5000 from a pipe separated file using Unix.
• List only directories using Unix command.
• What is $# in shell scripting?
• What does $? represent in Unix?
• Script to update 3rd field value from 123 to abc in pipe separated file.
• Script to update 5th field value from 123 to abc.
• How to check CPU usage of a running process?
• Fetch rows 10–15 from file using Unix command.
• How to check if file exists and is not empty before processing?
• Find files larger than 5GB using find command.
• Delete last record of a file using Unix.