Application Support Interview Questions :

In my previous articles I have added many SQL interview questions for helping the people. In this article i will share Application Support Interview Questions with answers. I will focus on SQL as well as unix interview questions which are useful for Technical Support Engineers. The Application Technical support is not only development work but also testing work. It is combination of both work and supporting the client. There are two types of Technical Supports available. I will try to give you Application level Technical support interview questions which includes not only system related questions but also SQL related questions as well.

Question 1 : What is mean by Technical Support in your words? Why you choose career in it?

Answer :

The above questions is more behavioral question rather than the technical question.According to the situation candidate needs to answer that questions. I will give you example for the same.

Answer from user perspective :

I choose to go into technical support because I’ve been fascinated by technology all my life, and I also like working with people. I want to use my technical knowledge to  solve issues customers are having.I also wants to apply my knowledge which is related to unix as well as related to SQL to solve the customer issues.

Question 2 :What is application support?What technologies it includes.( 100 % asked Application Support Interview Questions )

Answer :

The application support is supporting the delivered application to the customer with using different technical skills.The user will require any of the technical skills. The Unix and SQL skills are required to troubleshoot the application related issues.Mainly to work with technical support user needs to know about basics of SQL as well as basics of unix.

The Required technologies for application support are :

1. Any front End technology (java,.net)
2. Any back-end technology (Oracle,Mysql)
3. Unix Commands

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Question 3 : Explain one common scenario of application support you have faced.( 100 % asked Application Support Interview Questions )

Answer :

The above question is also more behavioral question you need to answer it technically. According to situation candidate need to answer that.

Answer from user perspective :

I would like to explain the application crash scenario. Application crash is one of the most common scenario technical support engineer facing. The most basic reason of application crash is unhandled exceptions. Due to some unhandled exceptions and different structures of looping in application user will face application crash.

Question 4 : How user can handle application crash issue? Is there any troubleshooting mechanism for the same?

Answer :

The System crash issue mainly occurs due to the unhandled exceptions. There are multiple ways to troubleshoot this issue and following are most common ways to resolve application crash issue .

1. Just try to check for Unhanded exception. If there are unhandled exceptions user need to add the Error code and Error description for the same.
2. The Full stack trace of exceptions so that user will check what is happened from application end.
3. After taking the permission just restart the unix server and check whether application is working or not.

Question 5 : Tell me some important skill to do technical support job?

Answer:

The technical support engineer should know all the technical skills related to that application. I would like to give you most important skills required by technical support engineers .

1.Technical Knowledge of Front End :  User must know about the technologies used in that specific application. Whether it is java,.net or any other technology.

2.Technical Knowledge about back end : User must know about back-end technologies used in that application.

3.SQL Skills : User must know the SQL to troubleshoot the application level issues.

4.Communication skill : User must have good communication skill so that user can understand the exact issue.

5.Knowledge of Tools : There are so many tools for issue tracking and management. The application support engineer must have knowledge of different tools.

Question 6 : What is SQL? How it is used in application support.( 100 % asked Application Support Interview Questions )

Answer :

SQL Stands for Structured Query Language which is specially designed to communicate with databases.SQL pronounced as Sequel is very widely used language in most of the database management systems like Oracle,MySQL,PostgreSQL etc.SQL provides us  a simple and efficient way of reading,writing,executing the data from the system.this is one of the SQL Interview Question ever asked in interviews.

For application support engineers SQL is useful in troubleshooting the issue. There are so many request to check whether that user is active or not active. In such cases the application support engineer checks by firing some queries from back-end.

Question 7 : What is difference between varchar and varchar2 datatype?

Answer:

Varchar can store up to 2000 bytes and varchar2 can store up to 4000 bytes of memory space.Varchar will occupy the space for null values whereas varchar2 can not occupy the space for null values.So varchar2 is good to use not to  face performace related problems.varchar2 is faster than varchar datatype.

Question 8 : How to represent comments in oracle?

Answer:

There are following 2 ways for commenting in oracle:

1.Single Line comment: Two dashes (–) before begining of the line

2. Multi-line comment/Block comment:When user wants to comment multiple line /* */ operators are used.

Question 9 : What is Database?( 60 % asked Application Support Interview Questions )

Answer:

• It is a collection of Inter-Related data. Records the data in HDD (Permanent Memory).
• Inter-Related data means relation among data values
• Objective of DB is to record data & save it for future use.

Question 10 : .What is RDBMS?

Answer:

RDBMS stands for Relational DataBase Management System. RDBMS is the basis for SQL, and for all modern database systems like MS SQL Server, IBM DB2, Oracle, MySQL, and Microsoft Access.

A Relational database management system (RDBMS) is a database management system (DBMS) that is based on the relational model as introduced by E. F. Codd.

Question 11 : What are tables and Fields?

Answer:

A table is set of data which is organized in to specific structured manner.Table is made up of combination of columns and rows. A table has specified number of column called fields but can have any number of rows which is called record.

Example:Table

Question 12 : What are different challenges user will face while doing application support duties?

Answer:

The above questions is more behavioral question rather than the technical question. According to the situation candidate needs to answer that questions. I will give you example for the same.

Answer from user perspective :

The most important quality of Technical support engineer is patience as well as calmness.There are so many times the frustrated customers who use abusive language. At such times its important to remain calm and show empathy towards the customer.

Question 13 : How knowledge of Unix helpful in technical support?( 100 % asked Application Support Interview Questions )

Answer:

Unix operating system is one of the most used and secure operating system which is using in development and deployment of lot of applications. Because of the Security of the UNIX operating system this is used in 90 percent of applications as a server operating system. Unix is Multi-user and Multitasking operating system which is used mainly as server in most of the applications. Now a days unix is using as a server operating system to handle so many applications .So if user have good knowledge of unix it will be helpful.

“Unix is simple,stable,multi-user,multitasking operating system which is used for Servers,Desktops and laptops..”

Question 14 :If user wants to display current user information which command is useful?

Answer :

Whoami :

This command displays current user information.

Example:

$Whoami

Output : Amit

Question 15.Which command is useful to show present working directory?

Answer:

PWD :

PWD is most commonly used command which is used to show the present working directory of the user.

Example:

$PWD

Output:\home\Amit

Question 16 : How to switch from one user account to other user account in Unix?

Answer:

The SU (Super user command) is used to switch from one user account to another user account.

Example :

$SU Rohit

the  above command switches account named “Amit” to account named “Rohit”.

Question 17 :  Have you done any automation for monitoring the system tasks?

Answer :

I had developed Log monitoring system’s scripts to keep track of exceptions. I am also using tool that notifies the stakeholders if any exceptional happen within the system.

Question 18 : Can we delete multiple files at a same time in Unix? How?

Answer:

rm command is used to delete multiple files at a same time.

Example:

$ rm file1 file2 ……File_N

E.g: rm Amit_Emptyfile

Question 19 : What does (.) And (..) means in unix?

Answer:

The current directory (.)

In UNIX, (.) means the current directory, so typing cd .

NOTE: there is a space between cd and the dot

Means stay where you are (the unixstuff directory).

This may not seem very useful at first, but using (.) as the name of the current directory will save a lot of typing.

The parent directory (..)

(..) Means the parent of the current directory, so typing cd .. Will take you one directory up the hierarchy (back to your home directory).

Question 20 : What is the UNIX command to list files/folders in alphabetical order?

Answer:

The ‘ls –l’ command is used to list down files and folders in alphabetical order. When you use ‘ls –lt’ is list down files /folders sorted with modified time.

Question 21: What code would you use in a shell script to determine if a directory exists?

Answer:

The UNIX test command with the -d option can be used to determine if a directory exists.

Example:
The following test command expression would be used to verify the existence of a specified directory, which is stored in the variable $mydir:

if [ -d $mydir ]
then
command(s)
fi

If the value stored in the variable mydir exists and is a directory file, the command(s) located between then and fi will be executed.

You can consult the test command’s man page (“$ man test”) to see what test command options are available for use.

Question 22 : What is the biggest challenge you come across as IT support analyst role and how did you solve the problem ?

Answer :

The support analyst role itself is a challenge. We require to deal with multiple teams and customers as well. I would like to give a simple example about the challenge which i have faced.

In one of the application the high priority incident came. I have access of logs and servers. But there is tier-3 team who has to deal with this code related issue. But The tier-3 team is somehow not available. So by taking permission of client we have updated millions of values on  database. The impact was so high and we have resolved that.

Question 23 :How did you manage the urgent issue when customer request and how did you mange it with time to over the situation to solve the problem ?( 100 % asked Application Support Interview Questions )

Answer :

As “customer is king” we require to manage or plan some time in work day to handle customer related issues. May customer will give you the ad-hoc issues. But in that case i am resolving issue then after that logging that issue in issue management system. It will show my work as well as time spent on customer issue.

Question 24 : How did you manage the difficult customer request and what action took to solve the issue ?

Answer :

The key work of Support analyst is to prioritize the work according to business impact. If some of the difficult customer requests are coming and which has huge business impact we require to give the highest priority to that incidents.

Question 25 : If application down how to troubleshoot the issue?

Answer :

This is the most asked application support interview question. So there are so many causes of the application down. If you require to troubleshoot the issue if application down kindly use the following steps ,

1. Check whether application server is reachable. Most of the cases the application will down if server is down. If server has issues then tell server team to troubleshoot issue or restart the server.
2. If any other issue check the deployment architecture of the application side.
3. Else check application configurations and resolve issue accordingly.

Question 26 : How to resolve P1 issue? If 2 P1 issues come at a same time how to act?

Answer :

The P1 issue is always critical .You should have list ready for contact persons of dependent services. You require to contact those immediately. You need to be calm and check all configurations,databases and troubleshoot issue accordingly.

If two P1 issues come at a time you require to prioritize the issue. You require to inform to your higher management in that case and ask for quick resource allocation if both issues are important.

These are above some important interview questions for application support engineer. Hope you like this article on Application Support Interview Questions.If you like this article on Application Support Interview Questions kindly comment in to comment section.