Most Frequently asked Oracle Apps Technical and Oracle SOA Interview Questions:
Due to technical advancements, there is a rapid increase in the demand for candidates skilled in Oracle technology in the market. I have prepared a set of interview questions along with their answers in this article.
Read our previous article on Oracle Forms and Reports Interview Questions.
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This article covers:
- Oracle Apps Technical Interview Questions
- Oracle SOA Interview Questions
Let’s Explore!!
Table of Contents:
Top Oracle Apps Technical And Oracle SOA Questions
Oracle SOA Interview Questions
Q #1) What do you understand by SOA and what are the benefits of using this architecture?
Answer: SOA stands for Service Oriented Architecture, which can be used to develop Enterprise Applications. Using this architecture, application components will interact with each other using interoperable services by following the communication protocol over the network.
The benefits of using SOA are:
- Components stay loosely coupled and can be reconfigured.
- Business services can be reused.
- Data security & confidentiality.
- Well-defined Interfaces.
- Better flexibility and maintenance.
Q #2) What is Oracle SOA Suite and what are its different components?
Ans: Oracle SOA Suite belongs to the Oracle Fusion Middleware group of software products.
This tool is based on SOA architecture and helps in creating, managing & integrating services with the application components so as to deliver SOA composite applications as one unit. This suite consists of five components.
Service components further consist of:
- BPEL Process
- Oracle Mediator
- Human Task Flow
- Decision Services
Binding components include:
- Services
- References
Q #3 ) Can you explain the difference between architecture followed in 10g & 11g?
Answer: Given below are the differences between 10g and 11g:
- SCA architecture is followed in 11g but not in 10g.
- In 11g, all of the SOA components (like BPEL, ESB, etc.), related to the project can be deployed at once as a single unit using a composite.xml file. In 10g, these components need to be deployed individually to the respective servers.
- The app server container for 11g is Web Logic Server while for 10g is OC4J.
- In 11g, Enterprise Manager takes care of all SOA components while in 10g separate consoles are maintained for each component.
Q #4) What is the concept of SOA Governance?
Answer: SOA governance is introduced to administrate services in a service-oriented architecture.
This governance is required to:
- Create new services when required.
- Update existing services.
- Manage the lifecycle of services.
- Enforce the rules on policies to maintain consistency.
- Monitoring and tuning performance of services.
- Manages user permissions on services.
Q #5) How can a process be deployed in SOA?
Answer: A process can be deployed using any of the below options:
- JDeveloper
- EMC(Enterprise Manager Console)
- WebLogic Scripting.
Q #6) What is SCA and how is it useful?
Answer: Service Component Architecture (SCA) is a model for building applications and systems using SOA concepts. The composite service has the assembly of different components of the application and these components can be deployed together at once using SCA.
The various specifications of SCA are:
- Assembly Model Specification.
- Binding Specification.
- Components Implementation Specification.
- Policy Framework Specification.
Q #7) How can you achieve loose coupling in the SOA framework?
Answer: Loose coupling can be achieved by abstracting and resolving the differences between different systems so as to provide seamless integration.
OSB facilitates the same and resolves the issues between service clients and business systems. SOA uses web services as building blocks to accomplish enterprise integration and component re-usage through loose coupling.
Q #8) Can you differentiate between mediator and OSB?
Answer: Mediator can be differentiated from OSB as:
- A mediator is part of a composite application and is used to mediate between the different components within and outside a composite application. While OSB i.e. Oracle Bus Service is a standalone ESB that mediates with heterogeneous clients and services without being a part of them.
- A mediator can be deployed as an SCA component while an OSB cannot.
- For a mediator, development can happen through JDeveloper IDE while for OSB, it can be done using Eclipse IDE or Web Console.
Q #9) Is SOA a part of Oracle Fusion Middleware?
Answer: Yes SOA is a part of Oracle Fusion Middleware behaving as a UI within the big Fusion platform.
Q #10) How is choreography different from orchestration?
Answer: Choreography and orchestration, are critical parts of the collaboration layer within service orientation i.e. SOA & BPM.
During Choreography, systems get integrated without following any business processes. There is no process defined to control the integration and it is done as per the defined sequence of levels.
In Orchestration, a central process which can be a Web Service itself controls the other web services involved in the integration of systems. This central coordinator will coordinate the execution of various operations of web services involved in the operation and completes the integration.
Oracle Apps Technical Interview Questions
Q #11) Can you define an ERP System?
Answer: ERP stands for Enterprise Resource Planning. It is a business software system that allows an organization to automate and integrate with the various business processes sharing common data across enterprises.
ERP software typically integrates the different facets of an operation like product planning, development, and manufacturing, sales, marketing, etc. using a single database, application, and interface.
Q #12) Explain Oracle Apps architecture.
Answer: Oracle Apps is a multi-tier architecture environment where the application server serves as an interface between clients and database servers.
Hence, the components of this architecture are:
- Clients
- Application servers
- Database servers
Clients will initiate the request for an operation to be executed by the database. The application server will act as an intermediate layer by sending the client request to the database and providing the requested data to the client.
Q #13) Can we create tables in the APPS schema?
Answer: No, we cannot create tables in APPS schema and this schema will only have synonyms.
Q #14) What is a flexfield? List out its types.
Answer: Flexfield is a database field possessing the inbuilt flexibility in defining reporting structure, which is relevant to specific organizations. A flexfield is made up of segments or subfields.
There are two types of flex fields:
- Key flexfields: They are used to record key data elements.
- Descriptive flexfields: They are user-defined flexfields and can be customized.
Q #15) What are the different components you should consider while defining responsibility in Oracle Apps?
Answer: A responsibility is a group of components. These are:
- Menu (mandatory): It is an arrangement of forms in a hierarchical manner.
- Data Group (mandatory): It defines the mapping between Oracle App products like forms, reports, concurrent programs, and Oracle database Ids.
- Responsibilities and Request Security Groups (mandatory): A request security group is the request group assigned to a responsibility.
- Function and Menu Exclusions (optional): Responsibility may or may not have an associated function and menu exclusion rules.
Q #16) What is a Value Set? List its various types.
Answer: As the name itself suggests, the value set is a predefined list of values used by Oracle for validation. It restricts the end-user to enter junk data by providing an option to select a value from the predefined set of values.
Oracle supports eight types of value set validations. These are:
- None (validated minimally)
- Independent
- Dependent
- Table
- Special (advanced)
- Pair (advanced)
- Translated Independent
- Translatable Dependent
Q #17) How can we import the data into a database using SQL * Loader?
Answer: SQL * Loader is a utility that is used to import the data in bulk from external files.
Various features of this command-line utility are as shown below:
- They can perform selective loading.
- They can perform multi-table loads.
- Supports various format files.
This utility can be invoked using a set of commands.
SQLLDR CONTROL=Test.ctl, LOG=Test.log, BAD=Test.bad, DATA=Test.dat USERID=superuser/XXX, ERRORS=999, LOAD=3000, DISCARD=toss.dsc, DISCARDMAX=6
Q #18) What do you understand by Concurrent programs?
Answer: An executable file that can execute simultaneously with the other programs and utilize the hardware capacity to the fullest is called the concurrent program. Generally, these types of programs would be long-running and data-intensive. They can be grouped with reports to form a request group.
Q #19) What does the APPL_TOP directory contain?
Answer: APPL directory stores Oracle e-business suite files and hence it is commonly known as APPL_TOP directory.
This directory contains the files along with the relative directories:
- Technology files
- Product files
- Oracle e-business suite environment files
Q #20) What do you understand by a set of books?
Answer: The set of books is a financial reporting entity. It determines the functional currency, account structure, and calendar for a company or a group of companies.
There are two types of sets of books.
- Primary: It consists of functional currency
- Secondary: It consists of reporting currency
Conclusion
With this, I am concluding this list of interview questions on “Oracle SOA” & “Oracle Apps Technical”.
You can bookmark this post for future reference and read it as and when required. I am sure that these questions would really be of immense help to get through any oracle interview successfully.
Go to part 1 in the series: Top Oracle Interview Questions
STH Team wishes you all success!!