IT Job Interview

Obviously, the interviewer wants to know if you have any hands-on skills on UNIX network troubleshooting.  If you do have the experience, you must have used the following handy tools:

Netstat – Shows the status of the network.
Ping – Sends packets to a destination address and tracks the performance of packets round trip.
Spray – sends packets (like ping_ but, instead of one packet, it sends a burst of packets for greater duration, putting a simulated load on a network component to better test its communications.
Ifconfig – Can be used to ascertain useful network information as well as to configure the network port.
Etherfind – gives network information about all network traffic passing through the network connection.

The most popular software tools for enterprise data integration, data warehousing, and Extract, Transform and Load (ETL) are listed below.  You will be asked about skills and experience in using these tools in interviews for database development and systems integration positions. (more…)

Asset Management software capabilities maximize the lifetime value of complex assets and closely align them with the overall business strategy, allowing businesses to:

* Increase return on assets
* Decrease costs
* Increase productivity
* Improve asset-related decision-making
* Improve asset service delivery
* Improve regulatory compliance
* Increase business responsiveness
* Lower total cost of ownership

The following list shows the most popular asset management software tools: (more…)

Software developers and QA staff use bug tracking software tools frequently.  If interviewers ask you what bug tracking tools you use, here are a few you can give: (more…)

How do you handle version control in your development environment?  What version control software have you used?  These are common questions in application development interview.  Be prepared. (more…)

If you have used any ETL tools, explain it; otherwise say you developed customized scripting process by yourself. (more…)

Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) Software tools are one of the cutting-edge products just emerging onto the technology scene in recent years. Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) is a standards-based integration platform that combines messaging, web services, data transformation, and intelligent routing to reliably connect and coordinate the interaction of significant numbers of diverse applications across extended enterprises with transactional integrity. (more…)

Data replication software, which copies corporate information to an offsite location, is one of the key components of any disaster recovery plan. These software are used as disaster recovery tools to mirror a company’s mission-critical applicaitons from its primary data center to a backup facility, where it can restore the data if the primary center is damaged or unavailable. As more and more businesses are using replicaton software, mastering these tools has become ever more valuable skill.

Today the data storage replication software has become a $2 billion market worldwide. Also, the market for tools that help companies replicate mission-critical applications and records is consolidating, with players like EMC, Network Appliance and Symantec having gobbled up smaller competitors.

EMC Symmetrix Remote Data Facility
www.emc.com
This software replicates data to remote sites, and recovers files and systems during outages. EMC CommandCenter provides management functions for storage-area networks.

Veritas Replication Exec
www.symantec.com (Symantec acquired Veritas recently)
This sotware copies data from an organization’s application server to a standby server in real time. Another Veritas tool,Backup Exec,copies data from disk to disk and work with NetWare, Windows, Linux and Unix servers.

Network Appliance Snappy Tools
www.netapp.com
SnapMirror replicates data across a network, connecting data centers and disaster recovery sites. SyncMirror replicates two copies of data at once and can automatically shift access to one copy if the other is lost or unavailable

Other Key Player Vendors Offering Data Replication Tools:
Double-Take Software
Oracle
IBM
HP
CA (XOsoft)
Hitachi Data Systems
Neverfail Group
Strohl Systems

Network administrators are often required to select, install, configure and manage client security software to protect network and desktop from security threats. Some of the commonly used security software are listed below: (more…)

Database design is one of the most important IT funcitons, and software tools have been created to help you perform this important job. Database design is always a valuable skill in IT. Many of today’s database design tools support the entire database development lifecycle although many people only use these tools as a data modeler. Database design tools are usually used by database designers, DBAs, developers, and managers to perform the following tasks:

- Collect business rules.
- Analyze business entities and attributes.
- Build meta data.
- Create entity relationship diagram (ERD)
- Repository management.
- Design logical database.
- Design physical database.
- Generate database creation scripts.
- Reverse engineering database.
- Forward engineering.

Some tools support only databse from the some vendor, such as Oracle only for Oracle databsae; many tools support almost all major RDBMS, — Oracle, DB2, SQL Server, Sybase, Informix, Ingres, Gupta SQLBase, Teradata, Access, Progress, Access, FoxPro, from large to small, and more.

Listed below are the most important database design tools:

- AllFusion ERwin (Computer Associates)
- ER/Studio & DBArtisan (Embarcadero Technologies)
- Sybase PowerDesigner
- Oracle Designer
- QDesigner (Quest Software)
- DBDesigner (FabForce open source)
- Microsoft Visio