C# Interview Questions

1. What’s the implicit name of the parameter that gets passed into
the class’ set method? Value and its data type depend on whatever variable
we’re changing.

2. How do you inherit from a class in C#? Place a colon and then the
name of the base class. Notice that it’s double colon in C++.

3. Does C# support multiple inheritance? No, use interfaces instead.

4. When you inherit a protected class-level variable, who is it

available to? Classes in the same namespace.

5. Are private class-level variables inherited? Yes, but they are not
accessible, so looking at it you can honestly say that they are not inherited.
But they are.

6. Describe the accessibility modifier protected internal. It’s available

to derived classes and classes within the same Assembly (and naturally from
the base class it’s declared in).

7. C# provides a default constructor for me. I write a constructor that

takes a string as a parameter, but want to keep the no parameter
one. How many constructors should I write? Two. Once you write at least
one constructor, C# cancels the freebie constructor, and now you have to
write one yourself, even if there’s no implementation in it.

8. What’s the top .NET class that everything is derived from?

System.Object.

How’s method overriding different from overloading? When overriding,

you change the method behavior for a derived class. Overloading simply
involves having a method with the same name within the class.

9. What does the keyword virtual mean in the method definition? The
method can be over-ridden.

10. Can you declare the override method static while the original
method is non-static? No, you can’t, the signature of the virtual method
must remain the same, only the keyword virtual is changed to keyword
override.

11. Can you override private virtual methods? No, moreover, you cannot
access private methods in inherited classes, have to be protected in the base
class to allow any sort of access.

12. Can you prevent your class from being inherited and becoming a
base class for some other classes? Yes, that’s what keyword sealed in the
class definition is for. The developer trying to derive from your class will get a
message: cannot inherit from Sealed class WhateverBaseClassName. It’s the
same concept as final class in Java.

13. Can you allow class to be inherited, but prevent the method from
being over-ridden? Yes, just leave the class public and make the method
sealed.

14. What’s an abstract class? A class that cannot be instantiated. A

concept in C++ known as pure virtual method. A class that must be inherited
and have the methods over-ridden. Essentially, it’s a blueprint for a class
without any implementation.

15. When do you absolutely have to declare a class as abstract (as

opposed to free-willed educated choice or decision based on UML
diagram)? When at least one of the methods in the class is abstract. When
the class itself is inherited from an abstract class, but not all base abstract
methods have been over-ridden.

16. What’s an interface class? It’s an abstract class with public abstract
methods all of which must be implemented in the inherited classes.

17. Why can’t you specify the accessibility modifier for methods
inside the interface? They all must be public. Therefore, to prevent you
from getting the false impression that you have any freedom of choice, you
are not allowed to specify any accessibility, it is public by default.

18. Can you inherit multiple interfaces? Yes, why not.

19. And if they have conflicting method names? It’s up to you to

implement the method inside your own class, so implementation is left
entirely up to you. This might cause a problem on a higher-level scale if
similarly named methods from different interfaces expect different data, but
as far as compiler cares you’re okay.

20. What’s the difference between an interface and abstract class? In

the interface all methods must be abstract; in the abstract class some
methods can be concrete. In the interface no accessibility modifiers are
allowed, which is ok in abstract classes.

21. How can you overload a method? Different parameter data types,
different number of parameters, different order of parameters.

22. If a base class has a bunch of overloaded constructors, and an

inherited class has another bunch of overloaded constructors, can
you enforce a call from an inherited constructor to an arbitrary base
constructor? Yes, just place a colon, and then keyword base (parameter list
to invoke the appropriate constructor) in the overloaded constructor definition
inside the inherited class.

23. What’s the difference between System.String and

System.StringBuilder classes? System.String is immutable;
System.StringBuilder was designed with the purpose of having a mutable
string where a variety of operations can be performed.

24. What’s the advantage of using System.Text.StringBuilder over

System.String? StringBuilder is more efficient in the cases, where a lot of
manipulation is done to the text. Strings are immutable, so each time it’s
being operated on, a new instance is created.

25. Can you store multiple data types in System.Array? No.

26. What’s the difference between the System.Array.CopyTo() and

System.Array.Clone()? The first one performs a deep copy of the array, the
second one is shallow.

27. How can you sort the elements of the array in descending order?
By calling Sort() and then Reverse() methods.

28. What’s the .NET datatype that allows the retrieval of data by a
unique key? HashTable.

29.What’s class SortedList underneath? A sorted HashTable.

30. Will finally block get executed if the exception had not occurred?
Yes.

31. What’s the C# equivalent of C++ catch (…), which was a catch-all
statement for any possible exception? A catch block that catches the
exception of type System.Exception. You can also omit the parameter data
type in this case and just write catch {}.

32. Can multiple catch blocks be executed? No, once the proper catch
code fires off, the control is transferred to the finally block (if there are any),
and then whatever follows the finally block.

33.Why is it a bad idea to throw your own exceptions? Well, if at that

point you know that an error has occurred, then why not write the proper code
to handle that error instead of passing a new Exception object to the catch
block? Throwing your own exceptions signifies some design flaws in the
project.

34. What’s a delegate? A delegate object encapsulates a reference to a

method. In C++ they were referred to as function pointers.

35. What’s a multicast delegate? It’s a delegate that points to and

eventually fires off several methods.

36. How’s the DLL Hell problem solved in .NET? Assembly versioning
allows the application to specify not only the library it needs to run (which was
available under Win32), but also the version of the assembly.
37. What are the ways to deploy an assembly? An MSI installer, a CAB
archive, and XCOPY command.

38. What’s a satellite assembly? When you write a multilingual or multi-

cultural application in .NET, and want to distribute the core application
separately from the localized modules, the localized assemblies that modify
the core application are called satellite assemblies.

40. What namespaces are necessary to create a localized application?

System.Globalization, System.Resources.

41. What’s the difference between // comments, /* */ comments

and /// comments? Single-line, multi-line and XML documentation comments.

42. How do you generate documentation from the C# file commented

properly with a command-line compiler? Compile it with a /doc switch.

43. What’s the difference between <c> and <code> XML

documentation tag? Single line code example and multiple-line code
example.

44. Is XML case-sensitive? Yes, so <Student> and <student> are different

elements.

45. What debugging tools come with the .NET SDK? CorDBG –
command-line debugger, and DbgCLR – graphic debugger. Visual Studio .NET
uses the DbgCLR. To use CorDbg, you must compile the original C# file using
the /debug switch.

46. What does the This window show in the debugger? It points to the
object that’s pointed to by this reference. Object’s instance data is shown.

47. What does assert() do? In debug compilation, assert takes in a Boolean
condition as a parameter, and shows the error dialog if the condition is false.
The program proceeds without any interruption if the condition is true.

48. What’s the difference between the Debug class and Trace class?
Documentation looks the same. Use Debug class for debug builds, use
Trace class for both debug and release builds.

49. Why are there five tracing levels in

System.Diagnostics.TraceSwitcher? The tracing dumps can be quite
verbose and for some applications that are constantly running you run the risk
of overloading the machine and the hard drive there. Five levels range from
None to Verbose, allowing to fine-tune the tracing activities.

50. Where is the output of TextWriterTraceListener redirected? To the

Console or a text file depending on the parameter passed to the constructor.

51. How do you debug an ASP.NET Web application? Attach the

aspnet_wp.exe process to the DbgClr debugger.
52. What are three test cases you should go through in unit testing?
Positive test cases (correct data, correct output), negative test cases (broken
or missing data, proper handling), exception test cases (exceptions are thrown
and caught properly).

53. Can you change the value of a variable while debugging a C#

application? Yes, if you are debugging via Visual Studio.NET, just go to
Immediate window.

54. Explain the three services model (three-tier application).

Presentation (UI), business (logic and underlying code) and data (from storage
or other sources).

55. What are advantages and disadvantages of Microsoft-provided

data provider classes in ADO.NET? SQLServer.NET data provider is high-
speed and robust, but requires SQL Server license purchased from Microsoft.
OLE-DB.NET is universal for accessing other sources, like Oracle, DB2,
Microsoft Access and Informix, but it’s a .NET layer on top of OLE layer, so not
the fastest thing in the world. ODBC.NET is a deprecated layer provided for
backward compatibility to ODBC engines.

56. What’s the role of the DataReader class in ADO.NET connections?

It returns a read-only dataset from the data source when the command is
executed.

57. What is the wildcard character in SQL? Let’s say you want to
query database with LIKE for all employees whose name starts with
La. The wildcard character is %, the proper query with LIKE would involve ‘La
%’.

58. Explain ACID rule of thumb for transactions. Transaction must be: -
Atomic: It is one unit of work and does not dependent on previous and following
transactions.
Consistent: Data is either committed or roll back, no “in-between” case where
something has been updated and something hasn’t.
Isolated: No transaction sees the intermediate results of the current transaction.
Durable: The values persist if the data had been committed even if the system
crashes right after.

59. What connections does Microsoft SQL Server support? Windows

Authentication (via Active Directory) and SQL Server authentication (via
Microsoft SQL Server username and passwords).

60. Which one is trusted and which one is untrusted? Windows

Authentication is trusted because the username and password are checked
with the Active Directory, the SQL Server authentication is untrusted, since
SQL Server is the only verifier participating in the transaction.

61. Why would you use untrusted verificaion? Web Services might use it,
as well as non-Windows applications.
62. What does the parameter Initial Catalog define inside Connection
String? The database name to connect to.

63. What’s the data provider name to connect to Access database?

Microsoft.Access.

64. What does Dispose method do with the connection object? Deletes
it from the memory.

65. What is a pre-requisite for connection pooling? Multiple processes

must agree that they will share the same connection, where every parameter
is the same, including the security settings.

66.Who is a protected class-level variable available to?

It is available to any sub-class (a class inheriting this class).

67. Are private class-level variables inherited?

Yes, but they are not accessible. Although they are not visible or accessible
via the class interface, they are inherited.

68. Describe the accessibility modifier “protected internal”.

It is available to classes that are within the same assembly and derived from
the specified base class.

69. What’s the top .NET class that everything is derived from?
System.Object.

70. What does the term immutable mean?

The data value may not be changed. Note: The variable value may be
changed, but the original immutable data value was discarded and a new data
value was created in memory.

71. What’s the difference between System.String and

System.Text.StringBuilder classes?
System.String is immutable. System.StringBuilder was designed with the
purpose of having a mutable string where a variety of operations can be
performed.

72. What’s the advantage of using System.Text.StringBuilder over

System.String?
StringBuilder is more efficient in cases where there is a large amount of string
manipulation. Strings are immutable, so each time a string is changed, a new
instance in memory is created.

73. Can you store multiple data types in System.Array?

No.

74. What’s the difference between the System.Array.CopyTo() and

System.Array.Clone()?
The Clone() method returns a new array (a shallow copy) object containing all
the elements in the original array. The CopyTo() method copies the elements
into another existing array. Both perform a shallow copy. A shallow copy
means the contents (each array element) contains references to the same
object as the elements in the original array. A deep copy (which neither of
these methods performs) would create a new instance of each element's
object, resulting in a different, yet identacle object.

75. How can you sort the elements of the array in descending order?
By calling Sort() and then Reverse() methods.

76. What’s the .NET collection class that allows an element to be

accessed using a unique key?
HashTable.

77. What class is underneath the SortedList class?

A sorted HashTable.
78. Will the finally block get executed if an exception has not
occurred?
Yes.
79.What’s the C# syntax to catch any possible exception?
A catch block that catches the exception of type System.Exception. You can
also omit the parameter data type in this case and just write catch {}.

80.Can multiple catch blocks be executed for a single try statement?

No. Once the proper catch block processed, control is transferred to the
finally block (if there are any).

81.Explain the three services model commonly know as a three-tier

application.
Presentation (UI), Business (logic and underlying code) and Data (from storage
or other sources).

Class Questions:-
What is the syntax to inherit from a class in C#?
Place a colon and then the name of the base class.
Example: class MyNewClass : MyBaseClass

Can you prevent your class from being inherited by another class?
Yes. The keyword “sealed” will prevent the class from being inherited.

Can you allow a class to be inherited, but prevent the method from
being over-ridden?
Yes. Just leave the class public and make the method sealed.

What’s an abstract class?

A class that cannot be instantiated. An abstract class is a class that must be
inherited and have the methods overridden. An abstract class is essentially a
blueprint for a class without any implementation.

When do you absolutely have to declare a class as abstract?

1. When the class itself is inherited from an abstract class, but not all base
abstract methods have been overridden.
2. When at least one of the methods in the class is abstract.
What is an interface class?
Interfaces, like classes, define a set of properties, methods, and events. But
unlike classes, interfaces do not provide implementation. They are
implemented by classes, and defined as separate entities from classes.

Why can’t you specify the accessibility modifier for methods inside
the interface?
They all must be public, and are therefore public by default.
Can you inherit multiple interfaces?
Yes. .NET does support multiple interfaces.

What happens if you inherit multiple interfaces and they have

conflicting method names?
It’s up to you to implement the method inside your own class, so
implementation is left entirely up to you. This might cause a problem on a
higher-level scale if similarly named methods from different interfaces expect
different data, but as far as compiler cares you’re okay.

What’s the difference between an interface and abstract class?

In an interface class, all methods are abstract - there is no implementation. In
an abstract class some methods can be concrete. In an interface class, no
accessibility modifiers are allowed. An abstract class may have accessibility
modifiers.

Method and Property Questions

What’s the implicit name of the parameter that gets passed into the
set method/property of a class?
Value. The data type of the value parameter is defined by whatever data type
the property is declared as.

What does the keyword “virtual” declare for a method or property?

The method or property can be overridden.

How is method overriding different from method overloading?

When overriding a method, you change the behavior of the method for the
derived class. Overloading a method simply involves having another method
with the same name within the class.

Can you declare an override method to be static if the original

method is not static?
No. The signature of the virtual method must remain the same. (Note: Only
the keyword virtual is changed to keyword override)

What are the different ways a method can be overloaded?

Different parameter data types, different number of parameters, different
order of parameters.

If a base class has a number of overloaded constructors, and

an inheriting class has a number of overloaded constructors; can you
enforce a call from an inherited constructor to a specific base
constructor?
Yes, just place a colon, and then keyword base (parameter list to invoke the
appropriate constructor) in the overloaded constructor definition inside the
inherited class.

XML Documentation Questions

Is XML case-sensitive?
Yes.
What’s the difference between // comments, /* */ comments and ///
comments?
Single-line comments, multi-line comments, and XML documentation
comments.

How do you generate documentation from the C# file commented

properly with a command-line compiler?
Compile it with the /doc switch.

Debugging and Testing Questions

What debugging tools come with the .NET SDK?
1. CorDBG – command-line debugger. To use CorDbg, you must compile the
original C# file using the /debug switch.
2. DbgCLR – graphic debugger. Visual Studio .NET uses the DbgCLR.

What does assert() method do?

In debug compilation, assert takes in a Boolean condition as a parameter, and
shows the error dialog if the condition is false. The program proceeds without
any interruption if the condition is true.

What’s the difference between the Debug class and Trace class?
Documentation looks the same. Use Debug class for debug builds, use Trace
class for both debug and release builds.

Why are there five tracing levels in

System.Diagnostics.TraceSwitcher?
The tracing dumps can be quite verbose. For applications that are constantly
running you run the risk of overloading the machine and the hard drive. Five
levels range from None to Verbose, allowing you to fine-tune the tracing
activities.

Where is the output of TextWriterTraceListener redirected?

To the Console or a text file depending on the parameter passed to the
constructor.

How do you debug an ASP.NET Web application?

Attach the aspnet_wp.exe process to the DbgClr debugger.

What are three test cases you should go through in unit testing?
1. Positive test cases (correct data, correct output).
2. Negative test cases (broken or missing data, proper handling).
3. Exception test cases (exceptions are thrown and caught properly).
Can you change the value of a variable while debugging a C#
application?
Yes. If you are debugging via Visual Studio.NET, just go to immediate
window.

ADO.NET and Database Questions

What is the role of the DataReader class in ADO.NET connections?
It returns a read-only, forward-only rowset from the data source. A
DataReader provides fast access when a forward-only sequential read is
needed.

What are advantages and disadvantages of Microsoft-provided data

provider classes in ADO.NET?
SQLServer.NET data provider is high-speed and robust, but requires SQL
Server license purchased from Microsoft. OLE-DB.NET is universal for
accessing other sources, like Oracle, DB2, Microsoft Access and Informix. OLE-
DB.NET is a .NET layer on top of the OLE layer, so it’s not as fastest and
efficient as SqlServer.NET.

What is the wildcard character in SQL?

Let’s say you want to query database with LIKE for all employees whose name
starts with La. The wildcard character is %, the proper query with LIKE would
involve ‘La%’.

Explain ACID rule of thumb for transactions.

A transaction must be:
1. Atomic - it is one unit of work and does not dependent on previous and
following transactions.
2. Consistent - data is either committed or roll back, no “in-between” case
where something has been updated and something hasn’t.
3. Isolated - no transaction sees the intermediate results of the current
transaction).
4. Durable - the values persist if the data had been committed even if the
system crashes right after.

What connections does Microsoft SQL Server support?

Windows Authentication (via Active Directory) and SQL Server authentication
(via Microsoft SQL Server username and password).

Between Windows Authentication and SQL Server Authentication,

which one is trusted and which one is untrusted?
Windows Authentication is trusted because the username and password are
checked with the Active Directory, the SQL Server authentication is untrusted,
since SQL Server is the only verifier participating in the transaction.

What does the Initial Catalog parameter define in the connection

string?
The database name to connect to.
What does the Dispose method do with the connection object?
Deletes it from the memory..

What is a pre-requisite for connection pooling?

Multiple processes must agree that they will share the same connection,
where every parameter is the same, including the security settings. The
connection string must be identical.

Assembly Questions
How is the DLL Hell problem solved in .NET?
Assembly versioning allows the application to specify not only the library it
needs to run (which was available under Win32), but also the version of the
assembly.

What are the ways to deploy an assembly?

An MSI installer, a CAB archive, and XCOPY command.

What is a satellite assembly?

When you write a multilingual or multi-cultural application in .NET, and want to
distribute the core application separately from the localized modules, the
localized assemblies that modify the core application are called satellite
assemblies.

What namespaces are necessary to create a localized application?

System.Globalization and System.Resources.

What is the smallest unit of execution in .NET?

an Assembly.

When should you call the garbage collector in .NET?

As a good rule, you should not call the garbage collector. However, you could
call the garbage collector when you are done using a large object (or set of
objects) to force the garbage collector to dispose of those very large objects
from memory. However, this is usually not a good practice.

How do you convert a value-type to a reference-type?

Use Boxing.

What happens in memory when you Box and Unbox a value-type?

Boxing converts a value-type to a reference-type, thus storing the object on
the heap. Unboxing converts a reference-type to a value-type, thus storing
the value on the stack.

WHAT IS SERIALIZATION?
Serialization is the process of converting an object or a connected graph of
objects into a contiguous stream of bytes. Deserialization is the process of
converting a contiguous stream of bytes back into its graph of connected
objects. The ability to convert objects to and from a byte stream is an
incredibly useful mechanism. Here are some examples:
• An application's state (object graph) can easily be saved in a disk file or
database and then restored the next time the application is run. ASP.NET
saves and restores session state by way of serialization and deserialization.
• A set of objects can easily be copied to the system's clipboard and then
pasted into the same or another application. In fact, Windows® Forms uses
this procedure.
• A set of objects can be cloned and set aside as a backup while a user
manipulates the main set of objects.
• A set of objects can easily be sent over the network to a process running on
another machine. The Microsoft® .NET Framework remoting architecture
serializes and deserializes objects that are marshaled by value.

Why would you want to use serialization? The two most important
reasons are
• to persist the state of an object to a storage medium so an exact copy can
be recreated at a later stage, and
• to send the object by value from one application domain to another.

Differentiate Dispose and Finalize.

Finalize is called by the Garbage Collector, and the state of manage
objects cannot be guaranteed, so we can not reference them. Also, we cannot
determine when the GC will run, and which objects it will Finalize.

Dispose is called by the programmer, and is used to dispose of managed

and unmanaged objects. Within we dispose method; we release all of our
resources and call GC. Suppress Finalize as we have done the work of the GC.

Difference between structure and class:-

S.N Structure Class

o.
1. Structures are value types. Classes are reference types.

2. Structures use stack Classes use heap allocation.

allocation.
3. All structure elements are
Public by default.
4. Structure elements cannot be
declared as Protected.
5. Structure variable declarations
cannot specify initializers or
initial sizes for arrays.
6. Structures implicitly inherit
from the System.ValueType
class and cannot inherit from
any other type.
7. Structures are not inheritable.
Class variables and constants are
Private by default, while other
class members are Public by
default.
Class members can.
Class variable declarations can.
Classes can inherit from any
class or classes other than
System.ValueType.
Classes are inheritable.
8. Structures are never
terminated, so the common
language runtime (CLR) never
calls the Finalize method on
any structure.
Classes are terminated by the
garbage collector (GC), which
calls Finalize on a
class when it detects there are
no active references remaining.

Difference between DOM and SAX parser: -

DOM Approach is useful for small documents in which the program needs to
process a large portion of the document.
SAX approach is useful for large documents in which the program only needs
to process a small portion of the document.
SAX parser generally requires more code than the DOM interface.
Unless we build a DOM style tree from our application's internal representation
for the data, we can't as easily write the XML file back to disk.
The DOM tree is not constructed, so there is potentially less memory
allocation.
If we convert the data in the DOM tree to another format, the SAX API may
help to remove the intermediate step.
If we do not need all the XML data in memory, the SAX API allows us to
process the data as it is parsed.

Normalization:-Normalization usually means splitting tables into two or

more tables with fewer columns. Primary and foreign key relationships are
designed into the new smaller tables, so they can be reconnected with a join
operation. The advantage of splitting the table is to reduce data redundancy.
Here's a brief guide to the standard normalization forms:
First Normal Form: -
At each row and column intersections, there must be one and only one value.
Each column in a row can have only one value, and that value must be atomic.
Second Normal Form: -
Second normal form requires no non-key column be a fact about a subset of
the primary key. Event non-key column must depend entirely on the entire
primary key. The primary key must have an element of uniqueness. A primary
key may be composed of one or more columns forming a unique key. The
primary key does not change one created. The foreign key references an
tables primary key. The primary to foreign key represents a one to many
relationship.
Third Normal Form: -
Third Normal Forms Requires no non-key column depend on another non-key
column.
Fourth Normal Form: -
Fourth Normal form forbids independent one-to-may relationships between
primary key columns and non-key columns.
Fifth Normal Form: -
Fifth normal form breaks tables into the smallest possible pieces in order to
eliminate all redundancy within a table.