B1 Visa Interview (Chennai, India to US)

Yea many think that it's just a B1 Visa and what's there to write much about it?!!

Very true, but when you come from a middle class background and when you really have not gone in flight before and when you don't know much about how things works, and when you really so excited about your B1 Visa interview you can really find this blog to be useful.

It helped me to clear my B1 Visa interview.

I was so excited to hear from my manager that I'm offered an opportunity to apply for B1 Visa.

I know it's not a big deal for many, but for someone who was from a normal govt school in India it matter a lot.

I was quiet excited and lots of doubts I had before I could attend.  So I wanted to share my experience such that it might help someone like me.

* Prepare all the necessary documents.

* Travel desk at your office will help you on this.  I took with me a copy of my resume, last 3 months pay slip, invite letter to travel to US and my agenda.

*   Most importantly we must remember that we are not going to work there since B1 Visa never permits that.  So prepare yourself accordingly.

* The questions posted to you will always have an intention to know whether you are really going on a business purpose or on work motives.

* Will you be coming back to your hometown or will you seek opportunity to stay in US.  If you are married and you have family in your hometown they will have the assurance that you would be back.

* You salary matters.   They will check on your experience and your salary.  If they feel that you might look for opportunities they might hesitate to approve your Visa.

*   Present yourself confidently.  Be precise.  Answer to the point.  Sound clear and genuine.

*   All the best!

In the coming  blogs I will write more about my immigration and travel experiences.  Have a safe and happy journey dears!

Happy Freelancing..!!!

About Me:  I'm Jyothi.  I have 5 years of working as Oracle Developer.  I've experience working with big clients like Scope international of Banking domain, Windstream of U.S telecom, and Medicaid for the state of UTAH Healthcare.

Here are the reasons opting for Freelancing:

·         I need not travel 5 hours a day to reach my cubicle, never have to worry on petrol price hikes, and my vehicle service dates.

·         I need not think 100 times to request for a work from home option. I can work from home all the time.

·         I need not stick to office lunch/break timings, I can eat and work parallel.  I need to have to search for Jobs, need not worry about the contract periods. 

·         I can choose my projects, can take up more challenging works. Increase my professional skills and grow my network.  I need not wait for job rotation to work on other platforms. I can learn and I can work.

·         I would have an opportunity to know the whole picture of the project and enhance my business knowledge.  Rather fixing on part of the broken toy knowing not where that piece would be fitted in.

·         High rate of National exposure, which has possibility to learn about various customs and culture of different societies.  A great opportunity to learn new skills, can be away from office politics, and can have all the freedom that one can get in a corporate environment (though you would miss all the team lunch and team outings).

·         As women has so additional responsibilities like cooking, cleaning and other things, I need not worry of my dressing, accessories etc. 

·         I have been using computer from the time when I turned 5.  So I'm good at using shortcut keys and can work without mouse for navigation.  Also, I can type 60 words per minute which would aid my work completion to be faster.  Hence I used to complete my work soon and have to wait at office for the clock to strike 7pm IST so that I can make leave office, otherwise I've to face others as if I'm going on half a day leave without permission.  You don’t have this problem when you become a freelancer.

·         Hence with this idea I searched through various freelancing websites, later through online research, I had an understanding of how Toptal works.  Great to have freelancers like Toptal (Software Engineers Community) which can fulfill the dreams of a professional tagging them all together as freelancers (can also be called as toptalers J)

·         So, having said all these, the pros are higher than the cons.  Hence I’m eagerly waiting to tag myself as a freelancer.  God willing.  Waiting for the best to happen.   

My Favo Pics I've taken

At Capgemini on a rainy day, how beautiful is the rain, how great is God's imaginations.  No man can fathom the work of his hands.  This pic was taken @Karapakkam Prestige towers.

A day of celebrations @Choki Dhani, team outing at my first company Prodapt.  Could see so many families singing and dancing for our entertainment.  When you go to them personally and ask them about their stories, you could discover how pathetic their situation is.  I wish that people should look beyond their entertainments, willing to be like this light to shine in the darkness of others lives.

 I bought a wedding gift for my friend.  How great is God's mind.  He knew that man cannot be alone, so he created a partner for him to live in this world.  Through many hardships and tough times, these two ought to be one flesh, fighting the battles of life, and finding the purpose and meaning of living

Oracle PLSQL and SQL basic questions for 3 years experienced

SET 1

1. Syntax for Bitmap index. What is the purpose of Bitmap index. Which scenarios do we use it.
2. What is data dictionary. What are its classifications and privileges.
3. What is correlated subquery. Eg?
4. How do we migrate data from one table to another. How do we capture exceptions during that. (try to explain with bulk collect and saved expection cos thats what they look for)
5. If your query doesnt use indexes how do you tell the query to make use of the index you created. (here you need to explain about oracle hints)
6. what is correlated update.
7. Connect by Prior.
8. What are the uses of regular expressions. Learn few important functions of regular expressions. They may ask few real time questions on the spot to write a query using regular expressions.

SET 2

1.  What is cursor. types of cursor.  Why do we have referential cursor.

2.  What are the types of collections (Nested table, varray, associate array).  Difference between them.  Prepare some stored procedures for all these and execute them and check the output.

3.  What are saved exceptions.  Why should we use it.

4.  Difference between materialized view and normal view.

5.  Use of force view.

6.  Difference between stored procedure and function

7.  Difference between truncate and delete and drop.

8.  Prepare a stored procedure for bulk collect and give some sample values and execute.

10.  What are indexes.  types of it.  why do we use indexes.

11.  What are oracle hints why do we go for it.

12.  What is the use of NOCOPY passing parameter in the stored procedure.  

Oracle Database..

I learnt

First things first. What is ROWNUM?

ROWNUM is a pseudocolumn, assigning a number to every row returned by a query. The numbers

follow the sequence 1, 2, 3…N, where N is the total number of rows in the selected set. This is useful

when you want to do some filtering based on the number of rows, such as:  1 2 3 4 5 6

SQL> -- Rownum to limit result set

SQL> -- to three rows only

SQL> select empno, ename, sal, rownum

 from emp

 where rownum < 4;



     EMPNO ENAME        SAL     ROWNUM

---------- ---------- ----- ----------

      7369 SMITH        800          1

      7499 ALLEN       1600          2

      7521 WARD        1250          3

So out of those three rows if I want to select only rownum = 2, this should work. Right?

-- Query attempt to select row

-- with rownum = 2

select empno, ename, sal, rownum

from emp

where rownum = 2;

Run it on SQL.

no rows selected

What just happened?

Why did adding rownum = 2 return no results?

How ROWNUM Works

Here is the secret. Rownum values are not preassigned, they are determined on the fly, as the rows

are output. The common misconception is that every row in the table has a permanent ROWNUM. In

truth, rows in a table are not ordered or numbered – you cannot ask for row#5 from the table, there

is no such thing.

The pseudocode for a query using rownum is:

    rownum = 1

    for x in ( select * from query)

    loop

        if ( x satisfies the predicate )

        then

              output the row

              rownum = rownum + 1

        end if;

    end loop;

The first selected row is always assigned rownum = 1, and is tested against the predicate. When the

test is "< 4", rownum = 1 passes the test and the rownum is set to 2, and so the loop continues. The

first 3 rows pass the test and get printed out, till rownum becomes 4 and fails the test.

When the test is "= 2", the first row itself does not pass the test (since it is rownum = 1). The

increment never happens and no rows get printed.

All of which explains why the WHERE condition can only filter on what rownum is less than, not what

it is great than.

Summary

ROWNUM is a pseudocolumn that assigns a number to every row returned by a SQL query. It can be

of great use in filtering data based on the number of rows returned by the query.

ROWNUM gets its value as the query is executed, not before, and gets incremented only after the

query passes the WHERE clause. Therefore, your WHERE condition can filter data based on "rownum

< 2/3/4/." but not "rownum > 2/3/4.". The second filter will invariably return no rows selected.

Freshers Technical Interview Questions.

I could see there is lot of struggle for clearing this technical round.

So I wish I could help you out with these following questions.  Guys be clear with basic syntax of any one programming language to build your logic.  Either of these C/C++/JAVA

Just practice these logic and try building the programs, execute it and enjoy programming.  If you were not able to do it, its okay, we have source in the net, check that out!!!

1.  Palindrome or not.
2.  Amstrong number or not.
3.  Print the following when n=4

    *
    **
    ***
    ****

4.  Print the following when n =5

         1
       121
     12321
   1234321
 123454321

5.  Find odd/even
6.  Find Prime number or not.
7.  Swap two numbers without using temporary variable.
8.  Call by value, call by reference.
9.  Escape sequence.
10.  Pointers in C
11.  Types of testing.
12.  Difference between black box testing and white box testing
13.  What is regression testing.
14.  What is system testing.
15.  What is database.  why do we need database.
16.  What are the types of database.

Answers for PL/SQL Questions.

Praise to GOD!!

You may find better answers for these if you browse through.  But to brush up before going to the interview, this may help you to remember in a faster way.  Please correct me if I had made any mistakes.

All the very best guys..

Please find the list of Capgemini PlSQL and Unix interview questions.

When they start to ask about what is cursor.  You mention what is cursor, and types of cursor, difference between them.

1.  What is Cursor,
Cursor means
CUrrent
Set
Of
Records.

The private SQL area which holds this Current set of records for processing a query for DML operations (INSERT, Update, Delete)

2.  Types of Cursor

Implicit and explicit cursors.

Implicit cursors are the select statements that are used to retrieve more than one row from the table/tables.  Where we don't explicitly specify the CURSOR keyword.

Whereas in Explicit cursor, we declare and define the cursor, we open the cursor, fetch the records, and process the records and close the cursor.

(Here they might ask you this question, what if, you don't close the cursor after the cursor is used.  Prepare for it as well)

They may ask you to define few types of attributes as CURSOR NOT FOUND, INVALID_CURSOR.


3.  What is trigger.
(Oracle definition)
Oracle lets you define procedures called triggers that run implicitly when an INSERT, UPDATE, or DELETE statement is issued against the associated table or, in some cases, against a view, or when database system actions occur. These procedures can be written in PL/SQL or Java and stored in the database, or they can be written as C callouts.

Source:  http://docs.oracle.com/cd/B10500_01/server.920/a96524/c18trigs.htm

4.  Types of Triggers.
Source:  http://docs.oracle.com/cd/B10500_01/server.920/a96524/c18trigs.htm

5.  What is mutating error.

There are two exceptions to this recursion:

• When a triggering statement modifies one table in a referential constraint (either the primary key or foreign key table), and a triggered statement modifies the other, only the triggering statement will check the integrity constraint. This allows row triggers to enhance referential integrity.
• Statement triggers fired due to DELETE CASCADE and DELETE SET NULL are fired before and after the user DELETE statement, not before and after the individual enforcement statements. This prevents those statement triggers from encountering mutating errors.

6.  Is it possible to commit/Rollback inside a Function.  (If yes, how, if no, why?)
Search as Autonomous transaction

8.  How to add trailing zeros to numbers.
LPAD(). RPAD()