Sharepoint Interview Questions

How Branding can be achieved by Master Pages? What are the advantages or disadvantages of Master Pages?
Does sharepoint provide any way to grant read-only access to all the users of the company on the portal?
What are the steps to create a web-part?
What does the webpart .cab file include?
What are the benefits of using Infopath?
What are the different namespaces per Sharepoint Object Model?
What are the different Back-up and Restore methodologies?
What are the steps in running a custom WebService under the context of SharePoint?
How can you display content from one site in another under the same site collection ?
How to Create a custom list form?

1) What are Application Pages in SharePoint?
Unlike site pages (for example, default.aspx), a custom application page is deployed once per Web server and cannot be customized on a site-by-site basis. Application pages are based in the virtual _layouts directory. In addition, they are compiled into a single assembly DLL.

A good example of an Application Page is the default Site Settings page: every site has one, and it's not customizable on a per site basis (although the contents can be different for sites).

With application pages, you can also add inline code. With site pages, you cannot add inline code.

Typically, you link custom application pages to application.master, the master page file that is used by the default application pages in Windows SharePoint Services. You should also write application pages to inherit from a base class defined inside the Microsoft.SharePoint assembly named LayoutsPageBase.

2) When to use Diffrent Site Collections?

Ans. An Individual Site collection offers following :

For the Users:

Dedicated Recycle bins
Dedicated usage Reports
Distributed administration (site collection administrators)
Dedicated search scopes, keywords, and best-bets
Custom feature deployments
Dedicated language translation maintenance
Dedicated galleries for web parts, master pages, content types, site columns, site templates, and list templates
Dedicated shared libraries, such as site collection images and site collection styles
Dedicated real estate (Self Containment)

For the IT Administrators:

Site quota templates
Distributed administration
Site locking
Database maintenance options
Backup / Restore abilities
Content Deployments
InfoPath forms services global template targeting.

3)What are Security methods(Authentication methods) available in sharepoint.

Ans :"Out of the box", SharePoint 2007 supports nine authentication methods. NTLM (short for NT Lan Manager, which is simply the Windows authentication that everyone is familiar with) and Kerberos (also a Windows "standard" authentication) are offered during installation, but I recommend to get started with NTLM, as Kerberos requires "special configuration by the domain administrator", while NTLM works without further hassle.

What does AllowUnsafeUpdates do ?
If your code modifies Windows SharePoint Services data in some way, you may need to allow unsafe updates on the Web site, without requiring a security validation. You can do by setting the AllowUnsafeUpdates property.

C#:
using(SPSite mySite = new SPSite("yourserver"))
{
using(SPWeb myWeb = mySite.OpenWeb())
{
myWeb.AllowUnsafeUpdates = true;
SPList interviewList = myWeb.Lists["listtoinsert"];
SPListItem newItem = interviewList.Items.Add();

newItem["interview"] = "interview";
newItem.Update();
}
}

How Does SharePoint work?
The browser sends a DAV packet to IIS asking to perform a document check in. PKMDASL.DLL, an ISAPI DLL, parses the packet and sees that it has the proprietary INVOKE command. Because of the existence of this command, the packet is passed off to msdmserv.exe, who in turn processes the packet and uses EXOLEDB to access the WSS, perform the operation and send the results back to the user in the form of XML.

What is the difference between Syncronous & Asyncronous events?
Syncronous calls ending with 'ing'
E.g. ItemDeleting
Event Handler code execute BEFORE action is committed
WSS waits for code to return
Option to cancel and return error code

Asyncronous calls ending with 'ed'
E.g. ItemDeleted
Event Handler code executes AFTER action is committed
WSS does not wait for code to return
Executed in its own Worker thread.

What is ServerUpdate() ?
Any changes in the list, i.e. new addition or modification of an item.. the operation is complete by calling the Update method.

But if a List is set to maintain versions .. and you are editing an item, but don't want to save it as a new version, then use the SystemUpdate method instead and pass in 'false' as the parameter.

What is query.ViewAttributes OR How can you force SPQuery to return results from all the folders of the list?

If you use SPQuery on any SPlist .. it will bring back results from the current folder only.
If you want to get results from all the folders in the list.. then you need to specify the scope of the query by the use of ViewAttributes..
e.g. query.ViewAttributes = "Scope=\"Recursive\"";