JAVA BACKEND DEVELOPER

INTERVIEW QUESTION BANK

Year-Wise Edition | India Market

Service-Based Companies and Mid-Level Product Companies

370+ 3 13 2
Questions Year Bands Topic Sections Priority Tiers

Core Java, OOP, Collections, Strings, Exceptions,

SECTION 1 0 to 1 Year Spring Intro, SQL Basics

JVM, Concurrency, Java 8+, Spring Boot

SECTION 2 1 to 2 Years Internals, JPA, SQL Depth, Testing

Production Debugging, Microservices, Kafka,

SECTION 3 2 to 3 Years Redis, Gateway, Kubernetes

■ Must-Know — Master before every round ■ Good to Know — Strong differentiator for depth
 HOW TO USE THIS QUESTION BANK

■ Must-Know Core concept tested in almost every interview at this level. Know these cold.

■ Good to Know Depth question that shows 1-2 year thinking. Asked at stronger companies or when the
interviewer digs deeper.

Section 1 covers what every fresher must walk in knowing. Section 2 adds the depth expected after one year of
real work. Section 3 tests production thinking, system design, and the kind of scenario questions that separate
average from strong 2-3 year candidates.
SECTION 1 — 0 TO 1 YEAR (Fresher Level)
Focus: Core Java OOP, Collections, Strings, Exception Handling, Spring Intro, Basic SQL

1.1 OOP Fundamentals

■ What is the difference between a class and an object in Java? Give a real-world example.
■ What are the four pillars of OOP? Give one backend-relevant example for each pillar.
■ What is the difference between method overloading and method overriding? Can you override a static method?
■ What is the difference between an abstract class and an interface? When do you choose one over the other?
■ What is runtime polymorphism? Give a concrete example where the actual method called is decided at runtime.
■ What is encapsulation? Why is it important in a REST service?
■ What is the difference between 'is-a' and 'has-a' relationships? Which creates tighter coupling?
■ What is constructor chaining? Show how this() and super() interact with a concrete example.
■ What is the 'final' keyword? Explain every context it can be applied to and what each means.
■ What is the difference between upcasting and downcasting? Where can downcasting throw a
ClassCastException?
■ What is the difference between == and .equals() for Strings? Why can == sometimes return true for literals?
■ What is pass-by-value in Java? Use a simple object mutation example to prove Java never passes by reference.
■ What is autoboxing and unboxing? Where can autoboxing cause a NullPointerException?
■ What is the difference between static and instance methods? When would you use a static method?
■ What is the difference between a constructor and a method? Can a constructor call another constructor?
■ What is the difference between an abstract class and a concrete class? Can you instantiate an abstract class?
■ What is covariant return type in overriding? Give an example.
■ Explain the SOLID principles. Give one Spring Boot example for each.
■ What is the difference between composition and inheritance? Why is composition generally preferred?

1.2 Java Collections Framework

■ What is the difference between Collection (interface) and Collections (utility class)?
■ What is the Java Collections Framework? Name the main interfaces: Collection, List, Set, Queue, Map.
■ What is the difference between List, Set, and Map? When would you use each?
■ What is the difference between ArrayList and LinkedList? When does LinkedList outperform ArrayList?
■ What is the difference between HashMap and TreeMap? How do they differ in ordering and time complexity?
■ What is the difference between HashMap and HashSet?
■ What is the difference between HashMap and LinkedHashMap? When would you use LinkedHashMap?
■ What happens when you add a duplicate key to a HashMap?
■ What is the initial capacity and load factor of HashMap? How do they affect resizing?
■ What is the difference between fail-fast and fail-safe iterators? Give one example of each.
■ What is the difference between Comparable and Comparator? How do you sort Employee objects by salary?
■ What is the difference between Iterator and ListIterator?
■ What is a PriorityQueue? How does it determine ordering?
■ What is the difference between Stack and Deque? Why is Stack discouraged?

1.3 Strings
■ Why is String immutable in Java? What are the security and performance benefits?
■ What is the String pool? When is a String added to the pool versus allocated on the heap?
■ What is the difference between String, StringBuilder, and StringBuffer? When do you use each?
■ How many objects does String s = new String("hello"); create? Explain each.
■ What is the output: String s = "Hello"; [Link](" World"); [Link](s); — and why?
■ Why should you use StringBuilder instead of + concatenation inside a loop?
■ What is [Link]() and when would you use it?
■ How many objects: String s1 = "hello"; String s2 = "hello"; — and which == comparisons return true?

1.4 Exception Handling

■ What is the difference between checked and unchecked exceptions? Give two examples of each.
■ What is the parent class of all exceptions in Java? How does the exception hierarchy look?
■ What is the difference between Error and Exception? Should you ever catch an Error?
■ What does a finally block guarantee? Can it ever be skipped?
■ Can a finally block override a return statement in the try block? What is the output?
■ What is try-with-resources? Why is it preferred over manual finally-based cleanup?
■ How do you create a custom exception? Show both checked and unchecked variants.
■ When should you use throws versus wrapping in try-catch?
■ What are the dangers of catching Exception or Throwable broadly in a Spring service?
■ What is exception chaining (getCause)? Why is it useful for debugging?

1.5 Spring Framework — Introduction

Freshers must know what Spring is, why it exists, and exactly how Spring Boot differs from plain Spring.
■ What is the Spring Framework? What problems does it solve compared to plain Java EE?
■ Why do companies use Spring instead of plain Java? Name four core benefits.
■ What is Inversion of Control (IoC)? Give a simple example of how it works.
■ What is a Spring Bean? How is it different from a regular Java object?
■ What are the three types of Dependency Injection in Spring? Which is recommended and why?
■ What is the difference between Spring Framework and Spring Boot? When would you choose Spring Boot?
■ What problem does Spring Boot solve over plain Spring? What is auto-configuration?
■ What is the Spring Boot starter concept? What does spring-boot-starter-web include?
■ What does @SpringBootApplication do internally? Which three annotations does it combine?
■ What is the default scope of a Spring Bean? What are all the available scopes?
■ What is the difference between @Component, @Service, @Repository, and @Controller?
■ What is @Autowired? How does Spring inject a dependency at runtime?
■ What is the difference between @RequestMapping and @GetMapping?
■ What is the difference between @RequestParam and @PathVariable? Give a URL example for each.
■ What is @RequestBody? When is it used?
■ What is the difference between @Controller and @RestController?
■ What HTTP status codes should you return for GET, POST, PUT, DELETE, and validation errors?
■ What is the difference between PUT and PATCH?
■ What is the Spring Boot architecture? Name its main layers: presentation, service, repository.
■ What is @Value? How do you inject a property from [Link]?
■ What is [Link] versus [Link]? Which supports profiles better?

1.6 SQL — Fundamentals

■ What is the difference between DDL (CREATE, ALTER, DROP) and DML (INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE)?
■ What is the correct order of SQL clause execution: FROM, WHERE, GROUP BY, HAVING, SELECT, ORDER
BY?
■ What is the difference between WHERE and HAVING? When can you NOT use WHERE?
■ What is the difference between DELETE, TRUNCATE, and DROP?
■ What is INNER JOIN versus LEFT JOIN? When do you need each? Give a clear example.
■ What is the difference between UNION and UNION ALL?
■ What are ACID properties? Explain each with a bank transfer example.
■ What is a primary key versus a foreign key?
■ What is normalisation? Explain 1NF, 2NF, and 3NF with simple examples.
■ What is an index in a database? Why is it used and what is its trade-off?
■ What is the difference between a subquery and a JOIN? When do you use each?
■ What is a self join? Give a manager-employee hierarchy use case.
■ Write a query to find the second highest salary from an Employee table.
■ What is the difference between a View and a table? When would you create a View?
SECTION 2 — 1 TO 2 YEARS
Focus: JVM, Collections internals, Multithreading, Java 8+, Spring Boot depth, JPA, SQL depth, Testing

2.1 JVM & Memory Internals

■ Explain the JVM runtime data areas: Heap, Stack, Metaspace, Code Cache, and PC Register.
■ What is the difference between Young Generation, Old Generation, and Metaspace? What objects live in each?
■ What is the difference between Minor GC and Full GC? What triggers a Full GC?
■ What is Metaspace? How is it different from PermGen? What causes a Metaspace OutOfMemoryError?
■ What is JIT compilation? How does tiered compilation (C1 vs C2) improve performance?
■ What is an OutOfMemoryError? Describe three distinct root causes with examples.
■ What is a StackOverflowError? What causes it and how do you fix it?
■ How do you detect a memory leak in a running Java production service? What tools do you use?
■ What is the difference between a heap dump and a thread dump? When do you take each?
■ What is the Java Memory Model (JMM)? Why is it important for multithreaded correctness?
■ What is the happens-before relationship? Give three concrete examples.
■ What is the volatile keyword? When is it sufficient and when is it not enough?
■ What JVM flags would you set for a high-throughput Spring Boot REST API? Explain each flag.
■ What is the difference between G1GC, ZGC, and Shenandoah GC? Which suits low-latency REST APIs?

2.2 Collections Internals

■ Explain the internal working of HashMap: hashing, index generation, bucket array, collision handling, and
treeification threshold.
■ What is the hashCode() and equals() contract? What breaks if you override only one?
■ At what threshold does a HashMap bucket convert from a linked list to a red-black tree?
■ Why are String and Integer preferred as HashMap keys? What properties make a good key?
■ HashMap has load factor 0.75 and initial capacity 16. After how many entries does it resize?
■ You put a mutable object as a HashMap key and then mutate it. What happens on the next get()?
■ What is the difference between HashMap and ConcurrentHashMap?
■ How does ConcurrentHashMap achieve thread safety without locking the entire map in Java 8?
■ What is CopyOnWriteArrayList? What is its trade-off and when should you use it?
■ How does ArrayList resize internally? What is the growth factor and amortised cost?
■ What changed in ConcurrentHashMap between Java 7 segment locking and Java 8 CAS approach?
■ What is the difference between WeakReference, SoftReference, and StrongReference?

2.3 Multithreading & Concurrency

■ What are the different ways to create a thread in Java? Which is preferred and why?
■ What is the difference between Runnable and Callable? How do you retrieve a result from Callable?
■ Describe the complete Java thread lifecycle with all states and transitions.
■ What is the difference between sleep() and wait() in terms of lock release behavior?
■ What is a race condition? Give a bank account update example.
■ What is a deadlock? Give an example and explain three prevention strategies.
■ What is the difference between a synchronized method and a synchronized block? Which is more granular?
■ What is a ReentrantLock? Why would you use it instead of synchronized?
■ What is the difference between notify() and notifyAll()? When can notify() cause a missed-signal bug?
■ What is ThreadLocal? Give a real backend use case such as storing request-scoped user context.
■ What is ExecutorService? What are the four standard thread pool types and when do you use each?
■ What are the parameters of ThreadPoolExecutor? How do you size a pool for IO-bound versus CPU-bound work?
■ What is CountDownLatch? Give a real use case such as parallel service calls with a deadline.
■ What is a BlockingQueue? How do you implement a producer-consumer pattern using it?
■ A service uses ThreadLocal to store user session but runs on a thread pool. What bug can occur and how do you
fix it?
■ What is ReentrantReadWriteLock? When does it outperform a plain synchronized block?
■ What is a livelock? How is it different from a deadlock?
■ What is a Semaphore? How is it different from a lock? Give a rate-limiting use case.
■ How does the JVM implement synchronization internally? Explain monitor enter/exit and lock inflation.
■ What is ForkJoinPool? How does work-stealing work and when would you use it?

2.4 Java 8+
■ What is a functional interface? Is @FunctionalInterface annotation mandatory?
■ What is the difference between Predicate, Function, Consumer, and Supplier? Give an example of each.
■ What is a method reference? Give an example of each of the four types.
■ How does a Stream pipeline work internally? What is lazy evaluation and why does it matter?
■ What is the difference between map() and flatMap()? Give a real example.
■ What is the difference between intermediate and terminal operations? Give three examples of each.
■ How do you group a list of employees by department using Streams?
■ How do you find the employee with the highest salary using Streams?
■ When should you use parallelStream()? What are its pitfalls in a Spring web application?
■ What is Optional? How does it prevent NullPointerException and what are its limitations?
■ What is the difference between [Link]() and [Link]()? Which is more efficient?
■ What is CompletableFuture? How is it different from Future?
■ What is the difference between thenApply(), thenAccept(), and thenRun()?
■ How do you handle exceptions in a CompletableFuture pipeline?
■ What is the difference between a default method and a static method in an interface?
■ What is the default method diamond problem in Java 8? How is it resolved?
■ How do you run 50 external API calls in parallel and collect all results within a timeout using CompletableFuture?

2.5 Spring Boot — Internals & Bean Lifecycle

■ What does @SpringBootApplication do internally? Which three annotations does it combine?
■ How does Spring Boot auto-configuration work? Explain [Link] and [Link].
■ Describe the full Spring Bean lifecycle from instantiation to destruction.
■ What is @PostConstruct versus InitializingBean versus init-method? Which is preferred?
■ What is @Configuration and @Bean? When do you use them instead of component scanning?
■ What is the difference between @Primary and @Qualifier? When does a conflict occur?
■ What is the difference between a Spring Singleton bean and the GoF Singleton pattern?
■ Is a Spring Singleton bean thread-safe by default? Why not and how do you fix it?
■ What is the difference between @Autowired on field, constructor, and setter? Why is constructor injection
recommended?
■ What is the difference between JDK dynamic proxy and CGLIB proxy in Spring? When does Spring use each?
■ What is Spring AOP? How does it work internally through proxies?
■ What are the five Spring AOP advice types? When do you use Around advice?
■ What is a pointcut expression? Write one that intercepts all public methods in the service layer.
■ Can Spring AOP intercept a private method or an internal same-class call? Why not?
■ How does @Transactional work internally in Spring? What role does the proxy play?
■ A @Transactional method calls another @Transactional method in the same class. Does a new transaction start?
■ What is @Transactional propagation? Explain REQUIRED, REQUIRES_NEW, and NESTED.
■ What is @Transactional isolation? What anomaly does each isolation level prevent?
■ What is the default rollback behavior of @Transactional? How do you trigger rollback for a checked exception?
■ List three specific reasons why @Transactional might not roll back even when an exception is thrown.
■ What is @ConfigurationProperties? How is it different from @Value for bulk property binding?
■ How do you implement Spring profiles? What is the recommended approach using YAML?
■ What is readOnly=true in @Transactional? What Hibernate optimisation does it enable?

2.6 Spring Security

■ What is Spring Security? What two core concerns does it address?
■ What is the difference between authentication and authorisation in Spring Security?
■ How does Spring Security's filter chain work? What is the role of SecurityFilterChain?
■ What is JWT? What is its structure: header, payload, and signature?
■ How do you implement JWT authentication in Spring Boot? Describe the complete flow from login to accessing a
protected resource.
■ How do you validate a JWT token in a Spring Security filter without hitting the database?
■ How do you implement role-based access control (RBAC) in Spring Boot?
■ What is the difference between JWT and session-based authentication? When would you prefer each?
■ What is the difference between @PreAuthorize and @Secured?
■ How does Spring Security handle CSRF protection? When should you disable it?
■ What is OAuth2 at a high level? How does Spring Security integrate with it?

2.7 REST API Design

■ How does DispatcherServlet work in the Spring MVC request lifecycle? Walk through each step.
■ How do you implement global exception handling using @ControllerAdvice?
■ How do you validate a request body using @Valid and @Validated? What is the difference?
■ How do you handle MethodArgumentNotValidException and return a structured 400 error response?
■ How do you configure CORS in Spring Boot to allow only your production frontend domain?
■ How do you implement idempotency for a payment API endpoint?
■ How do you implement API versioning in Spring Boot (URI, header, and parameter approaches)?
■ What is the difference between @ResponseBody and ResponseEntity?
■ How do you stream a 500MB file download without loading it fully into JVM memory?
■ How do you implement rate limiting in a Spring Boot REST API?

2.8 Spring Actuator & Observability

■ What is Spring Boot Actuator? Which endpoints are most useful in production and why?
■ How do you expose only specific Actuator endpoints in production? What are the security implications?
■ What is the difference between /actuator/health and /actuator/info? How do you customise a health indicator?
■ What is Micrometer? How does Spring Boot integrate with Prometheus for metrics collection?
■ How do you create a custom metric using Micrometer: Counter, Gauge, and Timer?
■ What is /actuator/loggers? How do you change a log level at runtime without restarting the service?
■ How do you configure liveness and readiness probes in Kubernetes using Actuator endpoints?

2.9 JPA / Hibernate & Spring Data JPA

■ What is the difference between JPA, Hibernate, and Spring Data JPA? What does each layer provide?
■ What is the JPA persistence context? What is its default scope in a Spring Boot application?
■ What are the four entity states in JPA (Transient, Managed, Detached, Removed)? How do you transition
between them?
■ What is dirty checking in Hibernate? How does it work and when does the flush happen?
■ What is [Link] versus [Link]? What is the default for @OneToMany and @ManyToOne?
■ What is the N+1 query problem? How do you detect it using Hibernate SQL logs and what are all the ways to fix
it?
■ What is the difference between @JoinColumn and mappedBy in a bidirectional relationship?
■ How do you avoid infinite recursion in JSON when using bidirectional JPA relationships?
■ What is optimistic locking in JPA? How do you implement it with @Version?
■ What are the GenerationType strategies? When would you use SEQUENCE over IDENTITY?
■ What is the difference between JpaRepository and CrudRepository?
■ How do you write a custom query using @Query? What additional annotation is needed for modifying queries?
■ What is a LazyInitializationException? What are three ways to fix it and which is preferred?
■ What is an Entity Graph? How do you use @EntityGraph to solve N+1 without over-fetching?
■ What is pessimistic locking? When would you use PESSIMISTIC_WRITE versus PESSIMISTIC_READ?
■ How do you implement pagination and sorting in Spring Data JPA?
■ How do you implement batch inserts efficiently in JPA? What Hibernate properties must be enabled?
■ How do you implement projections? What is the difference between interface-based and class-based projections?

2.10 SQL — Depth, Indexing & Optimisation

■ What is a CTE (Common Table Expression)? How is it different from a subquery? Write a real example.
■ What is a window function? Write a query using RANK(), DENSE_RANK(), and ROW_NUMBER() and explain the
difference.
■ Write a query to find the top 3 highest-paid employees per department using window functions.
■ Write a query to find employees earning more than the average salary of their own department.
■ Write a query to detect duplicate rows and delete all but one copy.
■ What is an index? How does a B-Tree index work internally?
■ What is the difference between a clustered and a non-clustered index?
■ What is a composite index? What is the left-prefix rule? Give an example where the index is NOT used.
■ What is a covering index? How can it eliminate a table lookup entirely?
■ When does an index hurt performance instead of helping? Give three scenarios.
■ What is the difference between LIMIT/OFFSET pagination and keyset (cursor) pagination? Why is OFFSET slow
on large tables?
■ What are transaction isolation levels? What anomaly does each level prevent?
■ How do you read and interpret a SQL EXPLAIN plan? What do Seq Scan and Index Scan mean?
■ Write a recursive CTE to traverse an employee-manager hierarchy up to the root CEO.
■ Write a query using LEAD() and LAG() to calculate month-over-month revenue growth.

2.11 Spring Boot Testing

■ What is the difference between unit tests, integration tests, and end-to-end tests? When should you write each?
■ What is the test pyramid? How does it guide test investment in a Spring Boot project?
■ What is the difference between @SpringBootTest, @WebMvcTest, and @DataJpaTest? When do you use each?
■ What does @WebMvcTest load? How do you test a controller in complete isolation from the service layer?
■ What does @DataJpaTest load? How do you test a repository against an in-memory database?
■ What is Mockito? What is the difference between @Mock, @Spy, and @InjectMocks?
■ What is the difference between when().thenReturn() and doReturn().when()?
■ What is an ArgumentCaptor and when would you use it?
■ What is @MockBean versus @Mock? When do you use @MockBean in a Spring Boot test?
■ How do you test a Spring MVC controller using MockMvc? Describe a test for a POST endpoint with validation.
■ How do you test global exception handling (@ControllerAdvice) using MockMvc?
■ What is WireMock and how do you use it to stub external HTTP calls in integration tests?
■ What is contract testing? How does Pact work at a high level?
SECTION 3 — 2 TO 3 YEARS
Focus: Production debugging, advanced concurrency, microservices, Kafka, API Gateway, Redis, Kubernetes

3.1 Advanced Concurrency

■ What is a StampedLock? How does its optimistic read mode differ from ReadWriteLock?
■ What is a Condition variable? How is it used with ReentrantLock as a replacement for wait/notify?
■ What is thread starvation? How do you prevent it using ReentrantLock fairness?
■ What is [Link]()? What happens when the task throws an exception or you call get() without a timeout?
■ How do you run 50 external API calls in parallel and collect all results within a deadline using CompletableFuture?
■ How do you combine two CompletableFutures using thenCombine() versus thenCompose()?
■ What is the difference between submit() and execute() in ExecutorService?
■ How do you handle thread interruption correctly in a long-running background task?
■ What is CyclicBarrier? How is it different from CountDownLatch?
■ What is the ReentrantLock fairness trade-off? What is the impact on throughput?

3.2 Spring Boot — Production Patterns

■ How does @Cacheable work internally (CacheInterceptor, CacheManager, CacheResolver)?
■ What is the difference between @Cacheable, @CachePut, and @CacheEvict?
■ Your @Cacheable method is called every time despite a supposed cache hit. List the three most common causes.
■ How do you set cache expiration in Spring Cache backed by Redis?
■ How do you implement WebClient for async HTTP calls? How is it different from RestTemplate?
■ How do you implement retry logic with exponential backoff in Spring Boot using Resilience4j?
■ How do you implement a circuit breaker using Resilience4j in Spring Boot?
■ What is conditional caching using 'unless' and 'condition' in @Cacheable?
■ How do you implement asynchronous methods using @Async in Spring Boot?

3.3 Microservices Architecture & Patterns

■ What is the difference between a monolith and microservices? What are the main trade-offs?
■ How do microservices communicate? Synchronous REST/gRPC versus asynchronous Kafka/RabbitMQ.
■ What is Event-Driven Architecture? When is it preferable over synchronous REST calls?
■ What is the Saga pattern? When do you choose orchestration versus choreography?
■ How do you implement compensating transactions in a Saga? Give a payment and inventory rollback example.
■ What is CQRS? What problem does it solve and what complexity does it introduce?
■ What is Event Sourcing? How is it different from traditional CRUD? What are the drawbacks?
■ What is a circuit breaker? Describe the three states (Closed, Open, Half-Open) and their transitions.
■ What is the Bulkhead pattern? How does it prevent cascade failures?
■ What is service discovery? How do you implement it with Eureka in Spring Cloud?
■ What is distributed tracing? What is the role of traceId and spanId? How do you propagate context?
■ What is the CAP theorem? How does it affect design choices for a distributed database?
■ What is eventual consistency? How do you achieve it between two microservices?
■ What is the 12-Factor App methodology? Name five factors relevant to Spring Boot.

3.4 API Gateway & Spring Cloud Gateway

■ What is an API Gateway? What responsibilities does it take on in a microservices architecture?
■ What is Spring Cloud Gateway? How is it different from Netflix Zuul?
■ How do you configure routing rules in Spring Cloud Gateway?
■ How do you implement authentication at the API Gateway level using a pre-filter?
■ What is the difference between a Gateway filter and a Global filter in Spring Cloud Gateway?
■ How do you implement rate limiting at the API Gateway using Spring Cloud Gateway and Redis?
■ What is the difference between API Gateway load balancing and service-side load balancing?

3.5 Kafka & Spring Kafka

■ What is Apache Kafka? What problem does it solve compared to synchronous REST?
■ What is the difference between a Kafka topic, partition, offset, and consumer group?
■ How do you publish a message to a Kafka topic using KafkaTemplate in Spring Kafka?
■ How do you consume messages from a Kafka topic using @KafkaListener in Spring Kafka?
■ What is at-most-once, at-least-once, and exactly-once delivery in Kafka?
■ How do you implement idempotent Kafka consumers to handle duplicate messages?
■ What is a Dead Letter Topic (DLT)? How do you configure it in Spring Kafka for failed messages?
■ What is consumer group rebalancing in Kafka? When does it happen and what is its impact?
■ What is the difference between manual and automatic offset commit in Spring Kafka?
■ How do you configure retry logic for a failed @KafkaListener using RetryableTopic?

3.6 Redis & NoSQL Basics

■ What is Redis? What are its primary data structures and when would you use each (String, Hash, List, Set, Sorted
Set)?
■ What is Redis used for in a Spring Boot application beyond simple key-value caching?
■ What is the difference between Redis RDB snapshot and AOF append-only persistence?
■ What is MongoDB? When would you choose it over a relational database?
■ What is a document in MongoDB? How does schema-less design affect query patterns?
■ What is the difference between Redis SETEX and SETNX? Where would you use each?
■ How do you model a one-to-many relationship in MongoDB? Embedding versus referencing trade-offs.

3.7 Performance & Memory Debugging

Practice structured root-cause analysis: Observe, Hypothesize, Investigate, Fix.
■ Your REST API response time spikes to 10 seconds every few minutes. GC logs show frequent Full GCs.
Describe your step-by-step investigation and resolution.
■ A Spring Boot service starts dropping requests under 1000 concurrent users. How do you identify the bottleneck
across thread pool, DB connection pool, GC, and CPU?
■ A HashMap-based cache in a singleton Spring bean is growing unboundedly. What is the root cause and fix?
■ A scheduled job reads 1 million DB records and throws OutOfMemoryError. How do you fix it using streaming or
pagination?
■ A database query takes 8 seconds in production but 200ms locally. List your investigation steps.
■ You deployed a new version and response time increased 5x with no errors in logs. Describe your systematic
debugging approach.
■ A batch job throws OOM for 1 million plus records but works fine for small datasets. What do you change?
■ Your Kubernetes pod keeps restarting due to OOM. How do you configure memory limits and tune JVM heap for
a containerised app?
■ How do you profile a CPU-bound Spring Boot service? What tools do you use?
3.8 Concurrency Issues in Production
■ Two threads update the same account balance simultaneously and updates are lost. What is this problem and
how do you fix it using DB locking, synchronized, or AtomicLong?
■ A singleton Spring bean has an instance variable modified per-request and the value is wrong under load. How do
you fix it?
■ A microservice uses ThreadLocal for user session in a thread pool. Wrong users see wrong session data. What is
the bug and fix?
■ Your ExecutorService thread pool is exhausted and requests are queuing forever. How do you diagnose and tune
the parameters?
■ A deadlock occurs between two service methods locking two DB rows in different orders. How do you detect and
prevent it?
■ Your service uses parallelStream() for order processing and intermittently produces wrong totals. Why and how
do you fix it?
■ An API works in testing but throws ConcurrentModificationException randomly in production. What causes this
and how do you fix it?

3.9 JPA & Database Issues

■ A JPA entity with @OneToMany causes 100 plus SQL queries instead of 1. How do you identify and fix the N+1
problem?
■ Two users update the same product stock simultaneously and one update is silently overwritten. What JPA
feature prevents this?
■ A service method annotated @Transactional is not rolling back on exception. List three possible causes.
■ A lazy-loaded collection throws LazyInitializationException after the transaction closes. What are the solutions
and which is preferred?
■ You need to insert 100,000 records efficiently from a batch job. How do you configure and implement this with
Spring Data JPA?
■ A JOIN query on a 10-million-row table takes 30 seconds. Walk through your step-by-step investigation and
optimisation.
■ What is a database deadlock? How do you detect it from DB logs and prevent it by ordering row locks?
■ Your JPA app throws LazyInitializationException in production but not in tests. What causes the difference?
■ A refactoring removed @Transactional accidentally. How do you detect this in code review and integration tests?

3.10 Distributed System Scenarios

■ A payment microservice calls inventory and notification. If inventory fails, how do you rollback using the Saga
pattern?
■ Service A calls B which calls C. A timeout in C causes all threads in A and B to be exhausted. What pattern solves
this?
■ A client calls your payment API multiple times due to retries, causing duplicate charges. How do you prevent this?
■ Your event-driven service publishes an event but the consumer fails and the event is lost. How do you ensure
at-least-once delivery?
■ A Kafka consumer processes the same event twice due to a retry. How do you ensure idempotency in the
handler?
■ How do you debug a slow request that crosses 5 microservices with no centralised logging?
■ Your circuit breaker opens too aggressively on transient errors. How do you tune it?
■ A new deployment breaks an existing Kafka consumer because the event schema changed. How do you handle
schema evolution?
 ■ Your Redis cache is down. How does your Spring Boot application behave and how do you configure graceful
degradation?

3.11 Logging, Monitoring & Kubernetes

■ What is the ELK stack (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana)? How does it help you debug a production incident?
■ How do you structure logs in a Spring Boot application so they are searchable in Kibana?
■ What is the difference between structured logging (JSON) and plain text logging? Why is structured logging
preferred?
■ How do you correlate logs across multiple microservices using a traceId in the log output?
■ What is a Kubernetes liveness probe versus a readiness probe? What happens when each fails?
■ How do you configure liveness and readiness probes for a Spring Boot service using Actuator endpoints?
■ A Kubernetes pod shows CrashLoopBackOff. What is your debugging checklist?
■ How do you implement a distributed log correlation ID in a Spring Boot service using MDC?
■ What is Logback and how do you configure different log levels per environment?

3.12 SQL — Advanced & Stored Procedures

■ What is a stored procedure? How is it different from a function in SQL?
■ What are the advantages and disadvantages of stored procedures in a microservices architecture?
■ What is table partitioning? Explain Range, List, and Hash partitioning with use cases.
■ What is the difference between horizontal and vertical partitioning?
■ What is a partial index? When would you create one?
■ What is a Materialized View? When would you use it over a regular View?

3.13 Tricky & Commonly Failed Questions

Highest failure rate — test true understanding versus surface memorisation. Know these cold.

■ What is the output when a finally block has a return statement that conflicts with a return in the try block?
■ You put a mutable object as a HashMap key and then mutate it. What happens when you call get() with the same
reference?
■ String s1='Java'; String s2=new String('Java'); String s3=[Link](); — which == comparisons return true and
why?
■ Can a constructor throw an exception? If so, is the object created on the heap?
■ A @Transactional method calls another @Transactional method in the same class. Does the inner transaction
start a new one?
■ You annotate a private method with @Transactional. Does it work? Why or why not?
■ A Spring singleton bean has an instance variable modified per-request. Is this thread-safe?
■ HashMap has load factor 0.75 and initial capacity 16. After exactly how many entries does it resize?
■ What is the output: for(Integer i : list){ if(i==1) [Link](i); } — and why?
■ What is the risk of [Link]() without isPresent()? What is the safe alternative?
■ How do you distinguish [Link]() returning null because the key is absent versus because the key maps to
null?
■ Does adding @Async to a method guarantee it runs in a separate thread if the caller is in the same class?
■ You use parallelStream().forEach() to write to a non-thread-safe ArrayList. What happens and what is the fix?
■ You call notify() but no thread is waiting. What happens? Is the signal lost?
■ What happens when you call a @Transactional method on a bean instantiated directly with new MyService()
instead of injecting it?
■ What exception is thrown to the caller when you call [Link]() and the async task throws a
RuntimeException?
■ Can you make a static field volatile? What does it achieve?
■ What happens when two threads call [Link]() concurrently in Java 8+?
QUICK REFERENCE — TOP 30 MUST-KNOW QUESTIONS

01. OOP four pillars with real backend examples for each. 16. JWT structure and full Spring Security authentication
flow.

02. HashMap internals: hashing, collision handling, 17. Circuit breaker: Closed/Open/Half-Open states and
treeification threshold. transitions.

03. N+1 query problem: detection via SQL logs and all fix 18. Saga pattern: orchestration vs choreography with
strategies. compensating transactions.

04. @Transactional propagation: REQUIRED vs 19. CQRS and Event Sourcing: benefits, drawbacks,
REQUIRES_NEW vs NESTED. when to use.

05. Optimistic vs pessimistic locking in JPA for 20. [Link] vs EAGER: safer choice in REST
high-concurrency. APIs and the LazyInitializationException fix.

06. happens-before relationship in the Java Memory 21. Idempotency for payment APIs: implementation
Model. strategies.

07. ReentrantLock vs synchronized: when and why. 22. parallelStream() pitfalls in a Spring web application.

08. ConcurrentHashMap vs 23. All conditions required to make a class truly

[Link]() internals. immutable.

09. CompletableFuture: async pipelines and exception 24. Spring Actuator: key endpoints and liveness/readiness
handling. for Kubernetes.

10. Full Spring Bean lifecycle from construction to 25. Kafka: at-least-once delivery, idempotent consumers,
destruction. Dead Letter Topic.

11. Spring vs Spring Boot: differences and when to 26. ELK stack: structured logging and log correlation with
choose Spring Boot. traceId.

12. Spring Boot auto-configuration: [Link] / 27. SQL EXPLAIN plan: Seq Scan vs Index Scan and
[Link]. fixing slow queries.

13. @Transactional same-class call: why the proxy is 28. Composite index left-prefix rule: when the index is and
bypassed. is not used.

14. JDK dynamic proxy vs CGLIB proxy: when Spring 29. Redis data structures and their use cases in a Spring
uses each. Boot service.

15. Global exception handling with @ControllerAdvice. 30. @Cacheable internals: CacheInterceptor,
CacheManager, and top 3 miss causes.