Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 Interview Questions

Q. What is SharePoint 2010?
SharePoint 2010 is the business collaboration platform for the Enterprise & the Web that enables you to connect & empower people through an integrated set of rich features. Whether deployed on-premises or as hosted services, SharePoint 2010 helps you cut costs with a unified infrastructure while allowing you to rapidly respond to your business needs.
Q. How would you re-deploy the old custom solutions in SharePoint 2010.What Changes are needed to the old Solution files.

Ans. SharePoint 2010 object model contains many changes and enhancements, but our custom code will still compile and, will run as expected. You should however, rewrite and recompile any code that refers to files and resources in "12 hive".
Q. What are the security improvements in SharePoint 2010 ?

Ans. In SharePoint 2010 a variety of security methods have been introduced.

Claims-Based Authentication - Claims based authentication is based on identity. and trust.

Code Access Security - in which you can specify your own code access
security (CAS) policy for your web parts.

Sandbox Solutions - Sandbox Solutions which when deployed to the server, SharePoint runs in a special process that has limited permissions.

Cross-Site Scripting - Introduced to prevent Cross - Site Scripting (XSS) attacks.
Q. Whats New with SharePoint WebParts?

A developer can create two types of webparts using Visual Studio 2010.

1. Visual Webparts - Allows you to Drag and Drop the controls from the Toolbox to WebPart Design surface. You can of course write your custom code in the code file. You can also package and deploy your webparts directly to Sharepoint from VS by pressing Clt+F5. Visual studio 2010 also provides you with three different views for developing webparts. The views are split view, design view and Source view(as we have in designer 2007).

Note : The Visual Webpart project Item basically loads a User Control as a WebPart.


2. ASP.Net WebParts - Where a developer can build up User Interface and logic in a class file. You do not have designer for drag and drop of controls. This webpart inherits from standard ASP.Net webpart. For Deployment we can again use ctrl+f5 to deploy this webpart.

Q. What are the Visual Studio 2010 Tools for SharePoint.

Ans. Visual Studio 2010 includes SharePoint-specific project types and project item types, and includes powerful packaging, deployment, and debugging features that help increase your efficiency as a SharePoint 2010 developer.

Some of the Templates avaiable are :
1.Visual Web Part project template.
2. List defination template.
3. Content Type template.
4. Empty Project template.
5. Event Receiver template.
6. some workflow template.
7. the Site Definition template
and many more....

Q. What are SharePoint Sandboxed soultions ?

Ans. SharePoint 2010 provides a new sandboxed environment that enables you to run user solutions without affecting the rest of the SharePoint farm. This environment means that users can upload their own custom solutions without requiring intervention from administrators, and without putting the rest of the farm at risk. This means that the existing sites\pages or components will not be effected by the newly added soultion.

Users can deploy the below four things as sandboxed soultions :
1. WebParts.
2. Event Receivers.
3. List Definations.
4. Workflows.
Q. What are Requirenments for SharePoint 2010.

Ans. SharePoint Server 2010 will support only 64 - bit. It will require 64 bit Windows Server 2008 or 64 bit Windows Server 2008 R2. In addition to this, it will require 64 bit version of SQL Server 2008 or 64-bit version of SQL Server 2005.


Q. What is LINQ. How is it used in Sharepoint ?

Ans. LINQ is a feature of the programming languages C# 3.0 and Visual Basic .NET. LINQ allows you to query in an object-oriented way, supports compile-time check, gives you intellisense support in Visual Studio and defines a unified, SQL like syntax to query any data source. But unlike other languages and query syntaxes which vary from one type of data source to another, LINQ can be used to query, in principle, any data source whatsoever. It is commonly used to query objects collections, XML and SQL server data sources.

The LINQ to SharePoint Provider is defined in the Microsoft.SharePoint.Linq namespace. It translates LINQ queries into Collaborative Application Markup Language (CAML) queries.
Q. What Changes are made in SharePoint 2010 to enforce Referential Integrity?

Ans. In SharePoint 2010, Referential Integrity is enforced using two options, available with Look-up columns.

While creating a Look-up column, you can either choose a) Restrict Delete or b) Cascade Delete to define a relationship between the Look-up list and the list containing the look-up Column. Read Details at SharePoint 2010 Referential integrity - Using LookUp Column

Q. Whats Ribbon in SharePoint 2010?

Ans.The Ribbon Bar, is one of the finest improvements that Microsoft added to Office 2007 . SharePoint 2010 follows the same path. The ribbon basically, is a toolbar that appears across the top of each page in SharePoint.

The top-level elements in the Ribbon are tabs. Each tab organizes a set of groups (like Edit.Browse) and contains a set of controls. The controls inside the groups include buttons, drop-down menus, check boxes, combo boxes, split buttons, and galleries. In short, the users now can see the options like checkOut,Check In, Edit Page,Publish Page, delete page under edit tab, on the top of the Page itself.

Performance : Now lets talk about the Performance of the ribbon in SharePoint 2010.
Cashing : The Out-of-Box ribbon in heavily Cashed. So the controls are downloaded once and are used for the rest of the site.

Client OM - In terms of Architecture, ribbon Xml defines the UI but the behavior is all controlled by the javascript. You can definitely have Client or server controls in the ribbon according to your need.

CSS UI - Ribbon has all Css layout for UI and does not uses any tables.

Clustered Images - All the Images displayed in the ribbon like icons and stuff are Clustered images, thus they reduce the round-trip to the server.

Dynamic scalling and Pop-ups - All the pop-ups are displayed dynamically.

Lastly, the big question How does Ribbon works ? - A file called CMDUI.XML stays at the web front end which contains the Out-of-Box site wide Ribbon implementation i.e. all the Ribbon UI for the entire site. In addition to this you have a CustomAction for each ribbon component. These CustomActions have CommandUIExtentions block which has CommandUIDefinitions and CommandUIHandlers which make up the activity of the ribbon component. So, when the ribbon is loaded the CommandUIDefinition merges with Out-of-Box definition in the CMDUI.XML

Q . Whats New in SPALerts ?

Ans. In SharePoint 2007, alerts were send only through e-mails, but in SP2010 users can also send an alert to mobile devices as SMS Message. A New property DeliveryChannels is introduced to indicate, whether the alert is delivered as E-mail or as an SMS Message.
Q. What Has Changed with SSP in SharePoint 2010.

Ans. In SharePoint 2010 Shared Service Providers (SSP's) are replaced by Service Applications. Services are no longer combined into a SSP. They are running independent as a service application. The service application architecture is now also built into Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010, in contrast to the Shared Services Provider (SSP) architecture that was only part of Office SharePoint Server 2007.

A key benefit here is that all services are installed by default and there is no SSP setup.
To know more about Service Applications refer this blog post. Service Applications in SharePoint 2010.
Q. What are the Hardware and Software requirements for SharePoint 2010.

Ans.

Hardware requirements :

# Processor 64-bit, four-core, 2.5 GHz minimum per core.

# RAM 4 GB for developer or evaluation use, 8 GB for single server and multiple server farm installation for production use.

# Hard disk 80 GB for installation

For production use, you need additional free disk space for day-to-day operations. Add twice as much free space as you have RAM for production environments.


Software requirements :

# The 64-bit edition of Windows Server 2008 Standard with SP2. If you are running Windows Server 2008 without SP2, the Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies 2010 Preparation Tool installs Windows Server 2008 SP2 automatically.



Q. What Has Changed with SSP in SharePoint 2010.

Ans. In SharePoint 2010 Shared Service Providers (SSP's) are replaced by Service Applications. Services are no longer combined into a SSP. They are running independent as a service application. The service application architecture is now also built into Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010, in contrast to the Shared Services Provider (SSP) architecture that was only part of Office SharePoint Server 2007.

A key benefit here is that all services are installed by default and there is no SSP setup.

Additional improvements for the service application model include:
• The services architecture is extensible, allowing third-party companies to build and add services to the platform.

• Services are managed directly in Central Administration (rather than a separate administration site).

• Services can be monitored and managed remotely.

• Services can be managed and scripted by Windows PowerShell™.

• Shared services communications take place over HTTP(S). Shared services do not directly access databases across farms.

• Most new services are built on the Windows Communications Framework. They have optimization built into their protocol, using binary streams instead of XML for data transfer. Test results show improvements in network throughput with this change.

Q. What are the advantages of Service Applications over SSP ?

Ans. The key limitation of the SSP architecture was that it was configured by using a set of services, and all Web applications associated with the SSP bore the overhead of all the services even if they weren't being used. To change the service configuration for a particular Web application, a new SSP would have to be created.

The service application architecture on the other hand, allows a set of services to be associated with a given Web application and a different set of services to be associated with another Web application. Also, the same service application can be configured differently in different Web applications; therefore, Web sites can be configured to use only the services that are needed, rather than the entire bank of services.

Q. Can we create a Single set of Services that will be shared across the farm?

Ans. Similar to the SSP model in Office SharePoint Server 2007, a single set of services can be shared by all sites in a farm. By publishing a service application (from the sharing group, under Service application tab), you can share it across server farms. This capability does not apply to all service applications, and some services can be shared only within a single server farm.

Q. What are Managed Accounts?

Ans. To reduce the load of managing various service accounts in Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, the concept of managed accounts has been introduced. Much like managed accounts in Windows Server 2008, they allow SharePoint Server to take control of all the service accounts you use. After SharePoint Server has control of these accounts, it can either manage their passwords — automatically changing them as necessary — or it can notify you when an accounts password is about to expire, allowing you to make the change yourself.

Q. What are the Methods of Backup and Recovery in SharePoint 2010?

Ans. Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 provides a broad range of levels for performing backups, including the entire farm, farm configuration information, site collections, subsites, or lists.

SharePoint Server 2010 uses two different tools to configure backup and recovery.

1. Central Administration : Central Administration provides a user interface where SharePoint Administrators will be prompted via menu structures to select the information that needs to be backed up. (see the Image below)


2. Windows PowerShell : Windows PowerShell is a command line tool that provides SharePoint administrators a way to perform backup and recovery with additional options such as file compression or working with SQL snapshots.

Listed below are a few of the benefits available when working with Windows PowerShell:

• Windows PowerShell scripts can be developed and scheduled (with Windows Task Scheduler), whereas Central Administration is used for single-use backups and restores.

• Windows PowerShell has the advantage of running against SQL snapshots instead of the production database. One of the parameters of the Windows PowerShell command will cause a SQL snapshot to be generated, and then Windows PowerShell will run the action against the snapshot instead of the production database. This will reduce the resource impact of the backup operation on the production environment.

• With Windows PowerShell, SharePoint administrators will have more granular control of options for the backup or restore.

For more info See : Windows PowerShell Tutorial


Q. How to Move content Databases using PowerShell ?

Ans. To attach\detach an existing content database use

Mount-SPContentDatabase "<ContentDb>" –DatabaseServer "<DbServer>" –WebApplication http://WebapplicationName

<ContentDb> is the content database to be attached.

<DbServer> is the name of the database server.

http://WebapplicationName is the name of the Web application to which the content database is being attached.

To detach a content database:

Dismount-SPContentDatabase "<ContentdBName>"

See more Commands at
Windows Powershell Common Commands

Q. How to Export a Site or List in SharePoint 2010?

Ans. SharePoint Server 2010 provides several new features that provide a granular level of backup for various components of site content. This includes content at the site, subsite, and list level.

Through Central Administration(Granular level Back-up) a SharePoint Administrator can configure a backup of a subsite or list. An Administrator can choose a site and a specific list to be exported.The administrators can also choose to export security and select the different versions that will be exported with the list.