ATG Interview Question and Answer

PAWAN MODI

ATG

ATG INTERVIEW QUESTION AND ANSWER

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ATG Interview Question & Answer

Preface This document is a quick handbook for ATG interview preparation. This document contains interview questions from all possible corners. Document contains questions with suitable answer. The target audience of this document is ATG application developers & ATG architects. This document can be used for internal grooming of teams. This document is a very good source of information about ATG commerce package. Information shared in this document is as per my experience and understanding. In this document, I have covered questions for ATG Commerce, ATG Servlet Pipeline, ATG Repository, ATG Order & Checkout, ATG Search, ATG Publishing, ATG Nucleus etc.

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Disclaimer The purpose of this document is to assist you in interview preparation & to have quick check on your ATG skills. This document is a quick review of ATG package. Objective behind this document is not to encourage attrition. Also referring this document doesn’t make you an ATG expert. This document is just a quick check on your ATG knowledge. Recommendation is to refer this document at the end of your homework. Also referring this document may not change the verdict of your interview process. Expectation from this document is to revise your ATG skills and to have a check on your ATG knowledge over the time.

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Table of Contents ABBREVIATION

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ATG

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Introduction ATG Nucleus Questions

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ATG Environment Questions

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ATG Commerce Questions

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ATG Servlet Pipeline Questions

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ATG Repository Questions

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ATG Code Component Questions

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ATG Search Questions

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ATG Publishing Questions

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ATG Order & Checkout Question

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ATG Profile Management Question

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Others

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Reference

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Abbreviation DAS

Dynamo Application Server

DAF

Dynamo Application Framework

DSS

Dynamo Scenario Server

DPS

Dynamo Personalization Server

DRP

Dynamo Request Protocol Server

GSS

Global Scenario Server

LM

Load Manager

CM

Connection Module

RMI

Remote Method Invocation

DCC

Dynamo Control Center

SBS

Session Backup Server

UDP

User Datagram Protocol alternative protocol to TCP/IP, (usually used for broadcasting)

SNMP Simple Network Management Protocol, MIB packet services

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ATG Introduction ATG is the worldwide leader in the E-commerce solutions. ATG product suite has enabled the vendors to enable their e-commerce commercial capabilities.

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ATG Nucleus Questions ATG Search runs within a standard ATG platform installation. Due to the heavy performance demands of indexing content and serving search responses, you must dedicate at least one machine in your network exclusively to Search. Q. What are the core components of ATG? Ans. Core components of ATG are DAS, DAF, DPS, ATG Commerce, ATG Publishing, DSS. Q. What is ATG Dynamo & what is ATG Framework? Ans. ATG Dynamo or Dynamo Application Server (DAS) is a J2EE application server from Art Technology Group (ATG). ATG Framework is an Application framework for building web applications. This framework contains all necessary modules and component requires for building and running ATG application. The application framework can also be run on all major J2EE application servers like JBoss, WebLogic, WebSphere etc. Q. What is the default scope of an ATG component? Ans. The default scope of an ATG component is Global. The global scope components initialize once at the time of server startup and remain available until server stops. Q. What are different scopes available in ATG component & what is default scope of ATG component? Ans. ATG component can have one of the 3 available scopes i.e. Global, Session or Request. Component default scope is Global. Q. What is the important design patterns used in ATG? Ans. MVC (Modal View Controller) and IOC (Inversion of Control). Q. What is the design pattern used in Droplet? Ans. Dispatcher View Strategy (a pull based MVC) used by Droplets. Q. What is the design pattern used in FormHandler? Ans. Service To Workers Strategy (a push based MVC) used by formhandlers. Q. Where IOC pattern is used in ATG? Ans. Dependency Injection or IoC (Inversion Of Control) is used by nucleus to resolve dependencies between components.

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ATG Interview Question & Answer Q. What is DPS? Ans. The Personalization module (DPS) provides tools for visitor profiling and content targeting, enabling to deliver personalized content to customers according to their characteristics and preferences. –

visitor profiling

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content targeting

Q. What is DSS? Ans. The Scenarios module (Dynamo Scenario Server) adds advanced scenario-based personalization features to the ATG Platform. To know more about DSS, refer document ATG Framework & Component. Q. What is ATG Portal? Ans. ATG Portal provides a customizable framework for building personalized Web portals for specific user communities. Q. What is the Foundation layer in ATG architecture? Ans. DAF (Dynamo Application Framework) is the foundation layer. Q. What is port for DRP, RMI, DSS? Ans. DSS=8850. RMI=8860, DRP=8870. Q. What are the important components come with ATG package? Ans. Core ATG components are as follow.   

Dynamo Application Framework (DAF) Dynamo Scenario Server (DSS) Dynamo Personalization Server (DPS)

Also the following ATG components layered on top of above core components.       

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ATG Portal ATG Commerce ATG Publishing (Content Administration) ATG Commerce Service Centre (CSC) ATG Search Outreach Campaign Optimizer Knowledge Response Mgmt.

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ATG Interview Question & Answer Q. What is the container used for ATG Framework or What is Nucleus? Ans. Nucleus is the container in ATG framework. All components run inside the Nucleus. Nucleus helps components to resolve their dependencies and provide all required resources needed by component to perform their task. Only single instance of Nucleus is possible at any given time in ATG. Nucleus is a component container in ATG. Nucleus is open Object Application Framework from ATG. ATG-7 is component-centric development platform. The ATG-7 Web applications are nothing but individual JavaBean components assembled together. These JavaBean components are configured and linked together by .properties files in Nucleus. In Nucleus, each service is packaged as a JavaBean or set of JavaBeans. These JavaBeans are configured individually and mounted into a namespace. The beans then interconnect with the beans representing other services. Nucleus is responsible for interpreting the component configurations and the management of the component namespace. Dynamo uses the Nucleus framework to organize components into a hierarchical structure (similar to a directory structure). Each Nucleus service has a unique Nucleus name. For example, the default javax.sql.DataSource component is located at /atg/dynamo/service/jdbc/JTDataSource Nucleus is the core of the entire ATG system. It creates and configures Nucleus components (also called beans and JavaBeans) and organizes them into a hierarchical namespace, essentially giving them a place to live so they can be referenced by other components by reading the .properties files associated with each component. Its Nucleus which figures out which components are to be used in an application, initializes them to their default values and decides how they connect to each other. This model makes it easier for the developers to build ATG applications by configuring and using the pre-built components instead of writing a lot of Java code from scratch. For detail information on ATG Nucleus, please refer ATG Component & Framework document.

Q. Can a single java class be used into multiple components? Ans. Yes, same java class can be used to form multiple components.

Q. What are the steps involved in creating a ATG component? Ans. Follow are the steps 1. Write java class for you component. 2. Write a properties file for the component. The name of properties file may / may not be same as java class. ATG

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ATG Interview Question & Answer 3. In properties file, define following attributes. $class: pointing to component java class with package name. $Description=short description about component. $Scope=Define scope of component. 4. Define extra attributes in properties file if needed. 5. Restart the server and go to dyn/admin/nucleus/ to see your newly added component at run time.

Q. What is layering in ATG & what is the effect of layering properties file in ATG or What is component layering in ATG or What is configuration layering? Ans. ATG give you freedom to define / override component (properties file) attributes at different layer. If the same property value is defined in two files at different layer, the last value overrides previous values. It is called configuration layering. Q. If an application has duplicated same component at DPS level & local config level. Which one will be used by nucleus at run time? Ans. Component from local config level will be used by Nucleus. Q. If a component has subject as a multivalue property with values as history & English, and it is extended as subject+=Maths, What is the value of property subject at runtime? Ans. Final value of property subject at run time will be history, English Maths. Q. What is Campaign Optimizer? Ans. ATG Outreach and Campaign Optimizer are used by the marketing people to create promotions, scenarios etc to track visitor behavior and tune the commerce system accordingly. Q. How many nucleus instances can run by ATG at the same time in same JVM? Ans. Only single instance of Nucleus can run in same JVM. Nucleus is a container where components resolves their dependencies and perform their job. For more information about Nucleus refer document ATG component & Framework. Q. What is DPS in ATG? Ans. DPS in ATG stands for Dynamo Personalization System. It is driven by User Profile Data and Business rules defined to deliver the right content to the right user. There are three key elements of the ATG DPS personalization System. ATG

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ATG Interview Question & Answer 1. User Profile Management – a. When a person visits a website driven by ATG Dynamo Personalization Server (ATG DPS) for the first time, the person is allowed to create its own User Profile. b. Once profile is created, DPS stores that User Profile in Profile Repository. This profile contains a list of properties that describe the person characteristics, such as the name, gender or date of last login etc. c. ATG DPS uses this profile information available in Profile Repository to provide targeted content to user. 2. Content Targeting - Content Targeting is the process of displaying a. Content items b. To a particular user c. At a particular time d. In a particular context and e. On a particular rule set. In the DPS rule based system, business managers create rule sets called Content Targeters that control the content displayed on the web site to individual user. 3. Targeting Email - DPS includes a Targeted Email service for composing and delivering personalized email using the same profile groups and targeting rules used to deliver content on web site. Also if you have Dynamo Scenario Server (DSS) installed, you can use scenarios to deliver targeted email. You can use targeted email to perform below activities. a. Send a registration confirmation message to a new user. b. Notify frequent customers of special sales. c. Notify all users that have not logged into the site since long and their accounts will be closed soon. d. Send out a mass mailing with each message tailored to its recipient. Q. Important two functions of the Nucleus? Ans. 1. Nucleus resolves component names to components. 2. Nucleus creates and initializes components.

Q. Provide two ways in which Nucleus components can be configured. Ans. 1. Manually editing the properties files. 2. Using the ATG Component Configuration Helper Utility. ATG

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ATG Interview Question & Answer Q. Provide valid list of component scopes? Ans. Global, Session, Request, and Window

Q. Which three can be used to create valid Nucleus components? Ans. 1. Any Java class with a public constructor. 2. Any JavaBean. 3. A Java class implementing GenericService.

Q. What are the two important methods in a component? Ans. getters & setters

Q. What are the Advantages of DAF? Ans. DAF is responsible for the following activities. 1. 2. 3. 4.

DAF has repositories which provide data anywhere architecture. Dependency injection it can write any object of type 1 call in to the db. Dynamo messaging using patch bay and JMS. Inversion of Control design pattern, whereby software components are discrete Entities coupled together by the Nucleus container, rather than through direct reference.

Q. What is a Component? Ans. Java bean and its configuration file together known as Component in ATG. A component is used to initialize or set the properties of a bean class.

Q. What are the performance issues with ATG? Ans. Performance problems come in many shapes and sizes, but they all mean that the processing of some task is not happening at the expected and previously observed speed. Performance issues include CPU utilization problems, slow response times , high levels of database activity, long running SQL queries, slow CA deployment s, just to name a few.

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ATG Interview Question & Answer Q. What is MANIFEST file? Ans. Applications often depend on other modules, these dependencies are declared in this file. The file name is MANIFEST.MF and resides in the META_INF directory. It specifies ATG-Class-Path, ATGRequired, ATG-Config-Path etc.

Q. How a component is instantiated? Ans. At the time nucleus starts, it checks for the component list in Initial.properties file. All components listed in this file will be instantiated with the server startup and rest of components will initialize as per the call. We can instruct nucleus to start a component during server startup, this is done by modifying the Initial.properties file. Add the component name to the initialServices property inside the Initial.properties file. One can start or stop components manually using an ACC.

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ATG Environment Questions Q. Explain various batch files in ATG home/bin? Ans. StartDynamoOnJboss.bat, RunAssembler.bat etc. For more please refer ATG-HOME/bin folder. Q. What is the default location of our java classes in ATG? Ans. Lib folder in the module. Q. What is the role of META-INF\MANIFEST.MF file? How it is used in setting up the module dependencies? Ans. ATG application often depends on other modules which are started automatically when your module is started. These dependencies are declared in the module manifest file at following location. /META-INF/MANIFEST.MF The list includes DSS at a minimum. If our application uses facilities provided by other application layers (e-commerce) then we will need to include those modules in the list as well. Note that we only need to include the top-level module; all additional modules required by the top modules will automatically be included. Q. What is the use of ATG-Required in MANIFEST.MF file? Ans. ATG-Required is use to highlight the dependency on other required modules. ATG-Required contains space-delimited set of module names, specifying modules on which this module depends. At the time of packing an EAR file (running runassembler), manifests of the modules listed here are processed before the current module’s, in least-dependent to most-dependent order. For more information kindly refer document ATG Framework & Components Q. Why we include DAFEar.ear in ATG-Required? What is the purpose of DAFEAR.ear? Ans. DAFEAR.ear is required to load J2EE class loader & EJB module. Q. What is use of DAFAdmin.ear? Ans. DAFAdmin.ear provides the web application for administration. Q. What is default RMI Port? Ans. Default RMI port is 8860.

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ATG Interview Question & Answer Q. What is the name component that contain list of components that needs to be started with server startup? Ans. Component name is initial. This component is placed in /config directory. This component contains a list of components that needs to be started with server startup. The property name is initialServices. This property comma separated list of components. Q. What is the out of box tool used to build the ATG application? Ans. Run assembler utility is used to build ATG application. Running this command build required ATG modules and create Enterprise archive (EAR). Q. How to integrate SiteMinder with ATG Login mechanism? Ans: The ATG uses the Personalization module for login-logout operations and a ProfileFormhandler to handle these operations. If ATG has to be integrated with third-party systems like SiteMinder, then the user authentication and log in will be handled by the SiteMinder and the siteminder can be configured to give the login credentials to the ATG Portals as part of the URL or Cookie. We can customize and configure the ProfileTools property of the DPS module to understand the user credentials without challenging the users once again. Q. What is the command line tool used to build application? Ans. RunAssembler.bat is used to build application. Q. If an application has duplicated same component name at DPS level & local config level. Which one will be used by nucleus at run time? Ans. The changes from local config level will be used as it has overridden the properties in local layer. Q. If component has subject as a multivalue property with values as history & English, and it is extended at different level as subject+=Maths, What is the value of subject at runtime? Ans. history, English, math. Q. What is the use of DAFEAR.ear? Ans. This is use to load J2EE class loader & EJB module. Q. What is the best location to place global classes? Ans. Local lib folder. Q. What is the use of DAFAdmin.EAR? Ans. This is used by admin for administration.

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ATG Interview Question & Answer Q. What is default RMI port? Ans. Default RMI port is 8860. Q. If we want a component to start with server startup then what needs to be done to achieve this? Ans. We need to add that component in Initial.properties component in initialService attribute. Adding here we are asking Nucleus to start component with the server startup. If component is not added here then component will start whenever it is required. Q. What is the default location of Java class in ATG module? Ans. Java classes are stored in /lib directory of ATG module. Q. What is the command line tool to build application? Ans. Command line tool used to build application is RunAssembler. Q. What is ACC? Ans. ACC (ATG Control Center) is a standalone user interface for the ATG Relationship Management Platform and its supported products. The ACC provides application developers, page designers, site administrators, business managers, and other members of your project team with point-and-click access to the tools they need for building and maintaining ATG applications Q. In an ATG multisite installation, identify three strategies that ATG employs to determine request is associated with. Ans. 1. Sticky site parameter based. 2. Domain based. 3. Path based.

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ATG Commerce Questions Q. What is ATG Commerce? Ans. ATG Commerce includes everything we need to build and manage personalized ecommerce Web sites. ATG Consumer Commerce provides business-to-consumer (B2C) storefront development with following features. –

Product Catalog management

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Profile Management

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Shopping Cart and Checkout

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Order Management

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Pricing

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Inventory

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Customer Service

Q. Can a catalog have direct products & sub catalog? Ans. Yes, a catalog can have direct products & sub catalog. Q. What is ATG Consumer Commerce? Ans. ATG consumer Commerce means B2C Commerce i.e. doing business with direct end users. Q. What is Product Catalog Repository? Ans. Product catalog is a repository containing items like category, product, media, skus etc. ATG commerce comes with default product catalog which can be extended as per business need. To know more about Product Catalog Repository, Visit document ATG Framework & Components. Q. What is sub-catalog? Ans. In custom catalog, we have master catalog and mater catalog contains sub-catalogs. The catalog design should be according to the client requirement. Q. What is List Price and Sale Price? Ans. List price is the undiscounted price & Sale price is the discounted price.

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ATG Interview Question & Answer Q. What are different Transaction Modes? Ans. These are valid transaction modes     

required requires_new supports not_supported mandatory

Note: - easy way to remember this is R Rn S nS M. Q. What is CatalogNavHistory component and explain its usecase? Ans. ATG Commerce provides CatalogNavHistory component to track the customer’s path through the catalog. The component is placed under /atg/commerce/catalog/CatalogNavHistory. The component uses the following input parameters. navAction - operation to be performed on the stack. Options are push, pop and jump. A blank navAction is treated as push. navCount - to detect use of the Back button and should be passed in with any link that leads to a page that uses breadcrumbs. Q. Can single form set any number of properties in any number of nucleus components? Ans. Yes, single form can be used to set any number of properties in any number of components. Q. Which property of product item used to indicate the duration of product availability in catalog? Ans. StartDate and EndDate indicate the duration of product in catalog. Q. For product comparison, product should be added to? Ans. In order to compare products, we should add those products to following component. \atg\commerce\catalog\comparison\product list Q. What is the name of FormHandler for GiftList? Ans. GiftlistFormHandler, GiftlistSearch Q. Name the calculators to calculate the shipping price? Ans. FixedPriceShippingCalculator, PriceRangeShippingCalculator, WeightRangeShippingCalculator.

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ATG Interview Question & Answer Q. If you want to update the computedCatalogs and parentCatalog properties of a product, which service should you use? Ans. AncestorGeneratorService Q. Your site supports configurable commerce Items and you want to enable price list based pricing. How would you configure the /atg/commerce/pricing/ItemPricingEngine? Ans. preCalculators=\ calculators/ItemPriceListCalculator,\ calculators/ConfigurableItemPriceListCalculators Q. The design of the OrderFulfiller and the HardgoodFulfiller uses the ClientLockManager to________. Ans. Prevent one component from processing messages for two different orders at the same time.

Q. In which component are the stages of the shopping process in ATG Commerce defined? Ans. /atg/commerce/bp/ShoppingOrderConfiguration via property Name stageNames.

Q. Which three methods are defined by the ItemPricingCalculator interface? Ans. priceEachItem, priceItem and priceItems.

Q. The business requires that only three Items be shown on the page from a slot even though the slot is populated with many more. What are two ways to do this? Ans. 1. Limit the number of items served in the slot configuration. 2. Limit the number of items displayed in the properties passed to targeting droplets on the page.

Q. In context of Product Comparison, what are the two roles of the Tableinfo component? Ans. 1. It provides the information needed to be displayed for comparison such as column header and properties. ATG

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ATG Interview Question & Answer 2. It provides sorting instructions for the table as displayed on site.

Q. Which three pricing engines use the Qualifier class to determine the objects to which it should a discount? Ans. ItemPricingEngine, OrderPricingEngine and ShippingPricingEngine

Q. Each of the stock levels has a threshold associated with it. When a stork level reaches the threshold, what is the default behavior? Ans. An event is generated.

Q. Which XML file(s) are loaded by the component /atg/commerce/catalog/ProductCatalog? Ans. All XMLs that are listed in the XML list of the productcatalog component.

Q. Which actions will enable you to add new properties to a SKU? Ans. Create an XML file in/atg/commerce/catalog/custom/customCatalog.xml and load it via the CONFIGPATH. Q. How does a component in the ATG Commerce fulfillment module verify that it has privileges to edit? Ans. It does not perform such verification.

Q. Which Form Handler and Droplet are used to approve or reject an order that is in PENDING_APPROVAL state? Ans. ApprovalFormHandler, ApprovalRequiredDroplet

Q. What should be done to mark the delivery of a shipping group as shipped? Ans. Invoke the shippingGroupHasShipped method on HardgoodFulfiller.

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ATG Interview Question & Answer Q. You've made the following category assignments to your catalogs. Which categories will be displayed if a call is made on allRootCategories on catalog B? Catalog A: rootCategories = category1, category2

Catalog B: rootCategories = category3, category4 rootSubCatalogs = CatalogA Ans. category1, category2, category3, catcgory4

Q. What is the likely outcome when a product's end date is set in the past? Ans. ATG automatically stops showing the product when category.ChildProducts is invoked.

Q. Which component do you need to configure to use a different hardgoodShippingGroup class? Ans. Order Tools.

Q. Name 2 types of checkout? Ans. Express and Guest

Q. What is the outcome when both the SiteScope and SiteIds properties are set on the component? Ans. The siteScope property is ignored.

Q. What should be the scope of the GiftlistSearch component? Ans. GiftlisSearch should be session-scoped because multiple pages are typically involved in gathering and displaying information.

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ATG Interview Question & Answer Q. Provide the three ways in which Oracle LiveHelp OnDemand reduces cart abandonment, lifts online sales revenues, and reduces services costs. Ans. 1. Identifying and proactively engaging at-risk shoppers 2. Increasing conversion rates and order values. 3. Deflecting service calls, increasing agent productivity, and increasing first contact resolution.

Q. If you want to access the list of the customer's active and global promotions, which pricing will you use? Ans. PricingModelHolder

Q. Which three BASE form handlers that provide a clean mechanism to implement a custom form handler? Ans. 1. EmptyFormHandler 2. GenericFormHandler 3. TransactionaFormHandler

Q. What role does the Qualifier play in ATG Commerce? Ans. It determines if any Item qualifies for the discount and which pieces should receive the discount.

Q. Which two item descriptors are subtypes of a media item? Ans. Media-external and Media-internal-text

Q. Which statement about Importing or exporting ATG promotions is true? a. Promotion scan be imported only into the Asset Management instance of ATG. b. Promotion Import Export integrator must be used to map the ATG Commerce Promotions with your external system.

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ATG Interview Question & Answer c. The list of promotions exported is controlled by either providing the list of IDs of the promotions to be exported OR by providing an RQL query that returns the required list. d. You can import only PMDL version 2 (ATG 10 promotions) with the ATG Promotions Import/Export API. e. Import or Export Closeness Qualifiers is not supported by the ATG Promotions Import/Export API. Ans. C

Q. Your company would like to serve personalization content based on the last item viewed by the customer. What is the highest level of scope (Global being highest) that the slot component can have? Ans. Session

Q. Which repository is used to store information about converted orders? Ans. /atg/commerce/order/abandoned/AbandonedOrderLogRepository

Q. Provide three key features of Oracle ATG Web Commerce Platform's B2C Commerce module. Ans. 1. Abandoned Cart 2. Recovery Purchasing Workflow Management such as support for Purchase Orders and Approvals. 3. Pricing and Order engines.

Q. What must be configured to share all gift lists across all sites? Ans. set /atg/commerce/gifts/GiftlistManager.siteScope=all

Q. What must you configure for ATG to charge the payment on the first shipment? Ans. Configure SettleOnFirstShipment on OrderFulfiller.

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ATG Interview Question & Answer Q. What is the state of a newly created order? Ans. Incomplete

Q. What is the difference between Express Checkout and Guest Checkout? Ans. 1. Express checkout is for the logged-in user and default shipping address and payment method from user profile will be used to place the order. 2. In Guest checkout user has to provide shipping and billing information in checkout journey.

Q. How do you display a Catalog? Ans. Standard Catalog First, we can use OOTB RootCategories targeter using TargetingForEach droplet which will get all the root categories of the catalog which root property is set to true. Custom Catalog We will get the user s catalog from the Profile.catalog.allRootCategories property and pass to the ForEach droplet. After getting the root categories in any of the above case, use CategoryLookup droplet to lookup categories, ProductLookup droplet to lookup products, and SKULookup droplet to lookup skus. We will get the item ids and pass between the pages to display its details. For example, we will pass the categoryId in the anchor tag in home page. When the user clicks on the link, the user will be redirected to the category details Page where we use CategoryLookup droplet by taking the request parameter catoryId. He re will get all the child products. Similarly we will set the productId in the anchor tag and pass it to the product details page where we use ProdyctLookup droplet to display the selected product details.

Q. What is the difference between Standard Catalog & Custom Catalog? Ans. The standard catalog is the single catalog shown to all users. Each user sees the same set of categories and products. The custom catalog allows us to create multiple catalogs which are intended to s how differently to different users. We can target a catalog to a specific user or an organization depending upon the business rules. For example, we can create a separate catalog for each country based on locale. Each locale will be having a separate catalog.

Q. How ATG pricing works? Ans. There are two types of pricing in ATG i.e. Static pricing and dynamic pricing.

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ATG Interview Question & Answer 1. In static pricing, we will display the listPrice or salePrice of the SKU in the productDetails page without calculating. 2. In dynamic pricing, the list price or the sale price of the SKU passed to the Pricing Engine to calculate the price. The pricing Engine will execute the pre-pricing calculators first and then it looks up for the global and active promotions of the user and applies the promotions on the raw price. The discounted price will be set in the PriceInfo object and is again passed to the post calculators. Finally, the PriceInfo object holds the price to be displayed to user. 3. For example ItemPricingEngine calculates the price of a commerce item and set the price to the ItemPriceInfo object. In the page we will get its price by calling the commerceItem.priceInfo.amount which is after discount and commerceItem.priceInfo.rawTotalPrice is before discount.

Q. How dynamic price is calculated for an item to display to user? Ans. 1. In dynamic pricing, the list price or the sale price of the SKU passed to the Pricing Engine to calculate the price. 2. The pricing Engine will execute the pre-pricing calculators first and then it looks up for the global and active promotions of the user and applies the promotions on the raw price. 3. The discounted price will be set in the PriceInfo object and is again passed to the post calculators. Finally, the PriceInfo object holds the price to be displayed to user.

Q. How do you create a promotion? Ans. We can create a promotion in the ACC. The promotions will be stored in the Promotions repository. The pricingModels.xml contains different types of promotions such as Amount-Off , Percentage-Off, Fixed price which can be applied to item or order or shipping levels. We will create the PMDL rule while creating the promotion which specifies the actual discount rule.

Q. How do u apply a promotion to user? Ans. There are two types of promotions in ATG i.e. global and user level. If we set the global property of the promotion to true, then that promotion will be applied to all users automatically by the pricing engine. For the user level promotions, we need to apply them through scenarios. The scenario has action called applyPromotion which adds the promotion to the activePromotions property of the user profile. Then

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ATG Interview Question & Answer pricing engine picks up the user level promotions from the Profile.activePromotions property for calculating the price. Q. What are pricelists? Ans. Price Lists allow you to target a specific set of prices to a specific group of customers. Price lists are managed through a single interface in the ACC. For ex ample, price lists can be used to implement business to business pricing where each customer can have its own unique pricing for products based on contracts.

Q. What are scenarios in ATG? Ans. Scenario anticipates and tracks the actions of the people who visit your Web site and responds appropriately by, for example, tailoring the content of the site, offering price promotions, or sending targeted e-mail messages.

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ATG Servlet Pipeline Questions Q What is ATG Controller Framework? Ans. ATG servlet pipeline is also called as ATG Controller Framework. Q. What are different types of request handling Pipeline? Ans. ATG has 2 types of request handling pipelines. a. DAS Pipeline – This pipeline serve request for any resources in dyn/admin directory. This is use to handle JHTML request. JHTML is a proprietry language and it relies on the page compiler available in DAS servlet pipeline. b. DAF Pipeline – This pipeline is to serve JSP request sent by end user. Q. What is ATG Pipeline or what is ATG servlet Pipeline? Ans. ATG Pipeline is a Servlet Pipeline, where sequence of Programs is executed in a queue. Any HTTP request comes from end user, passes through ATG Servlet Pipeline. The purpose of pipeline is to filter data coming in as HttpRequest and prepare custom DynamoHttpRequest object for the back end components. Pipeline is a very important feature of ATG and very powerful. We can define custom servlet in the pipeline. Kindly refer ATG Component & Framework document for details on pipeline. DynamoHttpRequest object is processed by every servlet in the pipeline. The output of a servlet becomes input to next servlet. First servlet in the pipeline is always DynamoHandler and last servlet is TailServlet. TailServlet finally invokes the filterchain defined in web.xml file. There are 2 different pipeline available in ATG i.e. DASPipeline and DAFPipeline. To know more about these pipeline, Visit document ATG Component & Framework. Q. All servlets in pipeline should implement an interface. What is the name of this interface? Ans. All servlets in pipeline implements PipelineableServlet interface. First implementation of this interface is PipelineableServletImpl. Q. How to extend PipelineableServletImpl? Ans. To extend the PipelineableServletImpl, We need to override the service method. When our servlet finishes processing, it passes the request and response objects to the next servlet in Pipeline by invoking a method called passRequest. Q. What is the purpose of InsertableServlet? Ans. whenever we want to create custom servlet in pipeline then we implement this interface i.e. InsertableServlet. Servlets that implement the InsertableServlet interface have an insertAfterServlet property that enables the servlet to insert itself in a specific spot in the pipeline. The key advantage of ATG

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ATG Interview Question & Answer this mechanism is that it does not require any change in existing servlets in the pipeline compared to PipelineableServlet. Example: if we want to insert a servlet i.e. Servlet1a, between two servlets i.e. Servlet1 & Servlet2 in the pipeline. If Servlet1a implements PipelineableServlet, you can reroute the pipeline by changing the value of the Servlet1.nextServlet property pointing to Servlet1a rather than Servlet2, and set Servlet1a.nextServlet to point to Servlet2. But if Servlet1a implements InsertableServlet, all you have to do is set Servlet1a.insertAfterServlet to point to Servlet1, and Servlet1a will automatically be spliced into the pipeline right after Servlet1 and before Servlet2. Q. What is PageFilter and where it is used? Ans. PageFilter is used in DAF request handling pipeline. This filter is defined in web.xml of module. PageFilter is responsible to handle JSP request. When the application server invokes PageFilter, it checks the request and response for a reference to a Dynamo request and response pair. If pair does not exist then PageFilter starts DAF servlet pipeline by calling DynamoHandler, the first servlet in the pipeline. For more information on PageFilter and Servlet Pipeline, refer document ATG Component & Framework. Q. What is DynamoProxyServlet and where it is used? Ans. DynamoProxyServlet is used in DAS request handling pipeline. In DAS servlet pipeline, DynamoProxyServlet is responsible for the calling the DynamoHandler. DynamoProxyServlet of DAS is same as pageFilter of DAF pipeline. Q. What is DynamoHandler and where it is used? Ans. DynamoHandler is the first servlet in the servlet pipelines (DAS or DAF). DynamoHandler is responsible to form DynamoHttpServletRequest & DynamoHttpServletResponse the wrapper classes of generic HttpServletRequest & HttpServletResponse. The idea behind having custom objects is, generic request and response objects are immutable and can’t be modified. Hence ATG creates custom request response object to add additional information in servlet pipeline for the back end component. Q. What is the name of interface that all servlet in pipeline should implement? Ans. The name of interface is PipelineableServlet. All servlet in pipeline implement this interface. To know more about Servlet Pipeline, refer ATG Framework & Component document.

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ATG Interview Question & Answer Q. What method to override while extending PipelineableServletImpl class and writing custom servlet in Pipeline? Ans. We need to override the service method. When servlet finishes processing, it passes the request and response objects to the next servlet by invoking a method called passRequest. Q. What is the first & last servlet in servlet pipeline? Ans. First servlet in pipeline is DynamoHandler & last servlet in pipeline is TailPipelineServlet.

Q. How does the ATG's pipeline manager identify the next element in the pipeline to be executed within a chain? Ans. By using the component configuration of the pipeline manager component.

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ATG Repository Questions Q. What is ATG Repository? Ans. ATG Repository is a persistence layer used to perform operation on underlying database. ATG repository is use to access Database through programs. ATG Repository separates the application logic from that Database query. ATG repository provides a fine grained abstraction between the application logic and Database. Thus it supports the ATG’s Data Anywhere paradigm i.e. the application logic to interact with data need not change for any change in the source of data. ATG repository architecture ensures that the source of the data is hidden behind the Dynamo Repository abstraction. It would be easy to change from a relational data source to another or to an LDAP directory since none of the application logic would need to change. Once data is retrieved from a data source it is transformed into an object-oriented representation. Manipulation of the data can then be done using simple getPropertyValue and setPropertyValue methods. The Repository API ties in closely with ATG’s targeting APIs, so you can retrieve items from the repository based on a variety of targeting rules, as well as retrieving specific identified items. To know more about ATG repository, kindly refer the document ATG Component and Framework. Q. Explain the best practices for Repository Caching? Ans. There are three cache modes available for repository caching i.e. Simple, Locked and Distributed. Simple mode is better if the application is running in single JVM and is not clustered. If the ATG applications are deployed in cluster of servers, then we have to go in for either Locked caching or Distributed Caching. For example, repositories like ProfileAdapterRepository, where at the most one server alone will be handling the updates, it is better to use Locked caching with proper configuration of ClientLockManager and ServerLockManager. Caching should generally be disabled when there is a possibility that the underlying data will be changed by a non-Dynamo repository application. Q. What are different Repository types supported by ATG? Ans. ATG supports for 4 different types of repositories. They are as follow. 1. 2. 3. 4.

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SQL Repository LDAP Repository Composite Repository Versioned Repository

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ATG Interview Question & Answer To know more about these repositories visit document ATG Framework & Component. Q. Identifier of Repository item is known as? Ans. Repository ID Q. What is Repository API? Ans. The Repository API (atg.repository.*) is a data access layer that defines a generic representation of a data store. Q. What is Product Catalog Repository? Ans. It is a repository containing catalog items like category, products, sku, media, images, promotion etc. All catalog related items are resides in this repository. ATG supports for single as well as multiple catalogs. Q. How can we enable gear caching? Ans: Gear caching is disabled by default. You can control gear content caching using the element in the gear manifest. If you use caching, then the gear’s content is cached for a specified period of time. In other words, when a portal request calls for a gear to render, the gear contents will be drawn from the cache, if a valid cache entry exists. Otherwise, the gear is invoked and its contents cached for a future request. This may, under some circumstances, improve a gear’s performance. Use gear content caching with caution. While using this feature may give a performance improvement, it may not produce correct results, particularly if the cache key or timeout isn’t specified correctly. The timeout is specified in milliseconds. This element must be specified after element. Q. What is repository model? Ans. SQL, LDAP, Composite and Versioned. Q. Repository is a collection of ……….? Ans. Repository is a collection of Repository Items. Q. In SQL Repository which one is true? a. A repository is a collection of repository items. b. A repository item is a JavaBean component that implements atg.repository.RepositoryItem or one of its sub-interfaces, and corresponds to the smallest uniquely identifiable entity in the underlying data store.

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ATG Interview Question & Answer c. In the SQL repository, for example, a repository item often corresponds roughly to a row in a table. d. In the SQL profile repository, each user profile is a repository item. Ans. All are true. Q. In SQL Repository, which one is true? a. Each repository item is made of properties. b. These properties store the data that makes up a repository item. c. Each property has a name, such as id, firstName, or lastName. d. In the SQL repository, these properties correspond roughly to columns of a table. e. The properties available to a type of repository item are defined in the repository’s item descriptors. Ans. All are true. Q. How to represent one-one relationship in repositories. Ans. Using Auxiliary table we can represent one-one relationship. Q. What is different possible xml-combine supported by ATG? Ans. These are the possible xml-combine values can be used in repository xml.      

xml-combine="replace" xml-combine="remove" xml-combine="append" xml-combine="append-without-matching" xml-combine="prepend" xml-combine="prepend-without-matching"

Note: - Trick to remember this is RRAAPP. Q. The SQL repository localization feature enables you to use resource files to localize – a. The values of the display-name and description of both item descriptors and properties b. The category of properties c. The strings used for representing values of enumerated property types Which statements are correct? Ans. All are correct.

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ATG Interview Question & Answer Q. What are different modes of caching at Item level? Ans. For each item descriptor, an SQL repository maintains two caches i.e. Item cache and Query cache. Q. What Hybrid Repository? Ans. Hybrid repository is the one where Meta data is stored in db & contents are stored in 3rd party system. Q. What is the name of repository for external user profile? Ans. Then name of repository is ProfileAdapterRepository and component path is /atg/userprofilling/ProfileAdapterRepository. Q. Repository is the collection of …………….? Ans. Repository is the collection of Repository Item. Q. Repository Item is described by …………..? Ans. Repository Item is described by Item Descriptor. Q. Which one is true about SQL Repository? a. Repository is a collection of Repository Items. b. Repository item is a JavaBean component that implements atg.repository.RepositoryItem or one of its sub-interfaces, and corresponds to the smallest uniquely identifiable entity in the underlying data store. c. In the SQL repository, a repository item often corresponds roughly to a row in a table. In the SQL profile repository, each user profile is a repository item. d. Each repository item is made of properties. These properties store the data that makes up a repository item. Each property has a name, such as id, firstName, or lastName. In the SQL repository, these properties correspond roughly to columns of a table. The properties available to a type of repository item are defined in the repository’s item descriptors. Ans. All of the above are true. Q. Each repository item must have an identifier. Can you name it? Ans. Each repository item must have an identifier, which is called a repository ID. The repository ID must uniquely differentiate the repository item from all other repository items of the same type. Q. One-one relationship in repositories is represented by ………..? Ans. One-one relationship in repositories is represented by auxiliary table. ATG

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ATG Interview Question & Answer Q. What is different type of XML-Combine? Ans. There are 6 different type of XML-Combine. These are used in repository xml.      

xml-combine="replace" xml-combine="remove" xml-combine="append" xml-combine="append-without-matching" xml-combine="prepend" xml-combine="prepend-without-matching"

Note: Easiest way to remember is RRAAPP. Q. What are different caching modes in ATG Repository? Ans. There are 4 caching modes available in ATG repository. a. b. c. d.

No Caching Simple Caching Locked Caching Distributed Caching

Q. What are different types of aching available in ATG Repository? Ans. There are 2 types of caching for Item Descriptor in ATG Repository. a. Item Caching b. Query Caching. To know more about ATG Repository Caching visit document ATG Framework & Component. Q. What is Hybrid Content Repository? Ans. In Hybrid Repository, Meta data is stored in DB and Contents are stored in 3rd party system. Q. What is the configuration of datasource to connect database? Ans. There are multiple ways to configure datasource. 1. Via FakeXADataSource – Point dataSource property of JTDataSource component to FakeXADatasource and define DB attributes in FakeXADatasource to point to DB. 2. Using JNDI Names – Point dataSource property of JTDataSource to DirectJTDataSource. Define unique JNDI name in DirectJTDataSource. Finally Define DB details in ds.xml file with the same JNDI name inside the application server. I prefer the second approach to connect to DB.

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ATG Interview Question & Answer Q. Assume that a versioned repository item in your application is not changed on the store serves but is only changed on the CA Server and published to the store server. Which caching mechanism should you choose for it on the store server? Ans. Any CA aware caching modes such as locked, distributed, or hybrid. Q. Identify the significance of using cascade="insert" from the snippet below:

Ans. Here insert is ignored for properties that use the attribute component item-type. Q. How is the result set cached when a query returns repository items whose item descriptors enable both item caching and query caching? Ans. The query cache stores the repository IDs indexed by the given query and the item cache holds the corresponding repository items indexed by the repository IDs. Q. What is the resulting outcome when the statements below are executed without a transaction? repositoryItem.setPropertyValue("name", "John"); repositoryItem.setPropertyValue("lastName", "Doe") Ans. For each setProperty value, ATG begins a JTA transaction, calls setPropertyValue, and commits the JTA transaction. At this point, SQL is issued and the changes are committed. Q. What does the childProducts property of an Item category contain? Ans. A union of fixedChildProducts and computedChildProducts of the category with possible duplicate products.

Q. What is the result if addItem on the repository is never called after createItem call? Ans. Item is not persisted in database. Q. Name three methods provided by the Out of the Box Form handler RepositoryFormHandler? Ans. Create, Delete and Update. Q. In the item descriptor provided, what is the column book_index used for?

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Ans. It is used for storing the sequence of books by the author.

Q. Important two benefits that the ATG Repository provides. Ans. 1. Provides a consistent API that connects to a wide variety of data sources. 2. Provides a persistent data storage space for site data.

Q. When using programmatic repository data access, each database operation is automatically wrapped in transaction of which mode? Ans. Supports mode.

Q. What can be done to prevent inventory data deadlocks in the database? Ans. Use inventory Manager's acquireinventoryLocks and releaselnventoryLocks methods.

Q. Which item descriptor in the SiteRepository is used to define Site Categories? Ans. siteTemplate.

Q. How do you define ID as a composite key in the item descriptor of a table? Ans.

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ATG Interview Question & Answer Q. What relationship the following item-descriptor demonstrate?

Ans. One-to-one relationship

Q. When would you use the QueryOptions class? Ans. To limit the size of the result set, direct how the result set should be sorted, and pre cache specified properties

Q. Which three query types are NOT supported by the SQL repository? a. includesAll b. elementAt c. indexOf d. starts with e. ignorecase Ans. A, B and C

Q. Difference between Item Cache and Query cache? Ans. For each item descriptor, an SQL repository maintains two caches i.e. Item caches & Query caches. 1. Item caches hold the values of repository items, indexed by repository IDs. Item caching can be explicitly enabled for each item descriptor. 2. Query caches hold the repository IDs of items that match given queries. When a query returns repository items whose item descriptor enables query caching, the result set is cached as ATG

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ATG Interview Question & Answer a. The query cache stores the repository IDs. b. The item cache stores the corresponding repository items.

Q. What are different modes of caching? Ans. Caching modes are set at the item descriptor level, through cache-mode attribute. The default caching mode is simple caching. To set a different caching mode on an item descriptor, set cache-mode to one of the following values. a. Simple b. Locked c. distributed (distributed TCP, distributed JMS, distributed hybrid caching)

Q. What are derived properties? Ans. Enables one repository item to derive property values from another repository item or from another property in the same repository item.

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ATG Code Component Questions Q. What design pattern followed by FormHandler? Ans. MVC2 Service to Worker (a push based MVC) design pattern is used for FormHandlers. Q. What is important design patterns used in ATG? Ans. ATG uses following design patterns.   

MVC2 Service to Worker (a push based MVC) design pattern is used for FormHandlers. MVC2 Dispatcher View (a pull based MVC) design pattern is used by Dynamo Servlet Beans (droplets). Inversion of Control (Dependency Injection) design pattern is used by Nucleus to tie components. This design pattern is used for inter-linking of components.

Q. Which class to extend while creating custom ATG Droplets? Ans. Custom droplet can be created by extending the DynamoServlet.java class. Package for this java class is atg.servlet.DynamoServlet.java Q. What is ATG FormHandlers? Ans. FormHandler is an ATG component that is used to push data from JSP form to back-end system. FormHandler are mostly used for server side validations of form data before that passes to back-end components or to read / write in repository and re-direct the user to different pages, depending on the results of the form submission. A FormHandler class must include one or more Handle method. Q. What is Base class of all ATG FormHandlers? Ans. The base / super class of FormHandler is GenericFormHandler.java. The package for this java class is atg.droplet.GenericFormHandler. Q. What is the class hierarchy for ATG Formhandlers? How to create a FormHandler? Ans. All FormHandler in ATG by-default implements an interface i.e. DropletFormHandler. There are 3 different top level implementation of this interface. They are as below.   

atg.droplet.EmptyFormHandler extends GenericService implements DropletFormHandler. atg.droplet.GenericFormHandler extends EmptyFormHandler. atg.droplet.TransactionalFormHandler extends GenericFormHandler.

1. EmptyFormHandler - The EmptyFormHandler is the most simplest to implement. It implements the DropletFormHandler interface and defines blank body implementations of the methods given in this interface. ATG

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ATG Interview Question & Answer 2. GenericFormHandler extends EmptyFormHandler. It defines the simple implementations of the DropletFormHandler interface methods and the basic error handling logic. If errors occur in processing a form that uses GenericFormHandler, the errors are saved and exposed as properties of the form handler component. 3. TransactionalFormHandler extends GenericFormHandler, It treats the form processing operation as a transaction. Though the methods invoked by this form handler are processed discretely, but their results are saved simultaneously. The beforeGet and afterGet methods do the transaction management. This establishes the transactions before any of your properties are set or handler methods are called. Q. What is ATG tag library? Ans. ATG tag library is a variant of jsp standard tag library. However ATG provides its own set of tag libraries e.g. dsp, dspel, core. Q. What are the various attributes possible with tag? Ans. Both & can have “bean”, “param” & “value” attribute.   

Bean attribute is use to access the ATG component. Param is use to access value of a parameter being passed on JSP or defined in an ATG component. Value is hard coded value on the JSP.

Q. What is Droplet and what is the use of droplet? Ans. Droplet is also known as Dynamo Servlet Bean. Droplet is use to retrieve & render data in JSP. Droplet is use to pull information from back-end components / database and render the same on JSP. Droplets are based on MVC2 Despatcher View design pattern. Idea behind droplet is to keep HTML and Java code separate. There are many out of box droplets available to perform various tasks. We can also custom droplet as per requirement. Q. What are the best practices to be followed during ATG development? Ans. Some of the best practices are defined here. This has huge impact on the performance. Never compromise with the coding standards and guidelines shared by ATG. 1.

ATG

Best practices for Component Resolution - The ATG Framework is very unique by its architecture and component centric environment. The components are stored in the Nucleus which is representing the components in a hierarchical structure and the components are looked up using the request.resolveName(“alias name”) method. But this is costly.

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ATG Interview Question & Answer The better option is to do a Dependency Injection of necessary components like DataSource, Repository etc., to the needed components. But in case, the injection is not possible, like a droplet or formhandler which needs to work with various datasources or repositories etc., then the components need to be resolved. ATG framework contains the atg.nucleus.naming package which includes the class ‘ComponentName’ that enable you to pre-parse frequently-used component. You can assign a name to a component, storing the name and its corresponding component in a HashTable. This typically results in faster name resolution for components and parameters. You can use a ComponentName object to represent any Nucleus component. To get the unique ComponentName for a given String, call the static getComponentName(String) method. This method looks the given string up in the hashtable of component names and either returns the value or creates a new one with the string that was passed in. This acts like a ServiceLocator design pattern. For example, you can set a ComponentName value like this public final static ComponentName PEACH = ComponentName.getComponentName("/atg/fruits/Peach");

2.

Best practices for Repository Caching - There are three cache modes i.e. Simple, Locked and Distributed. Simple mode is better if the application is running on single JVM and is not clustered across. If the ATG applications are deployed on a cluster of servers, then we have to go in for either Locked caching or Distributed Caching. For repositories like ProfileAdapterRepository, where at the most one server alone will be handling the updates, it is better to use Locked caching with proper configuration of ClientLockManager and ServerLockManager. Caching should generally be disabled when there is a possibility that the underlying data will be changed by a non-Dynamo repository application.

3.

LiveConfig Settings - The settings in Dynamo’s base configuration layer are optimized for application development, but may not be appropriate for a production environment. When our application is ready for production environment, we should enable the settings in the liveconfig configuration layer. This layer, which is disabled by default, overrides many of the default configuration settings with values that are more appropriate for a deployed site.

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ATG Interview Question & Answer For example, the liveconfig configuration layer improves Dynamo’s performance by reducing error checking and detection of modified properties files. To enable liveconfig, add the following line to the WEB-INF/ATG-INF/dynamo.env file in the atg_bootstrap.war module of EAR file. atg.dynamo.liveconfig=on The application assembler automatically includes this line in dynamo.env if you specify the –liveconfig flag when you invoke the runAssembler command. 4.

Logging Best Practice - Performance can also be improved by disabling the screen log and having only the File log. The component /atg/dynamo/service/logging/ScreenLog are the one which is logging to the screen by default, or it may also be a custom component like our own formatting logger. We can disable logging to the screen by setting the loggingEnabled property of the ScreenLog to false. Also set the log level to minimum Info and not Debug as otherwise there will be large number of log messages.

Q. What is the tag to import component? Ans. Tag to import component is . Q. What is the tag to import page? Ans. Tag to import page is Q. What is tag? Ans. tag supplies a parameter to the current servlet bean. dsp:oparam (open parameter) takes the value supplied to it in a JSP and passes it to the current dsp:droplet tag. Each servlet bean maintains a set of open parameters which the servlet bean can set, service, and deliver as output to a JSP. Q. What is FormException property? Ans. FormException is a vector of the exceptions that occur during form processing. Q. What is PropertyException and is it a read-write property? Ans. PropertyException is a read-only property that returns a Dictionary of subproperties i.e. one for each property set by the form. For each property that generates an exception, a corresponding subproperty in the propertyExceptions Dictionary contains that exception. For each property that does

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ATG Interview Question & Answer not generate an exception, the corresponding subproperty in the propertyExceptions Dictionary is unset. Q. What is FormError? Ans. FormError is a boolean that is set to true if any errors occur during form processing. Q. How to check if submitted form had any error? Ans. Using FormError attribute we can check if any error occurred in form submission. If error occurred then FormError will be true. Q. How to display all exception occurred during Form submission? Ans. Using FormException, we can display all exception occurred during Form submission. Q. What is the FormHandler to interact directly with SQL DB or How to interact directly with SQL DB? Ans. We can interact directly with an SQL database using SimpleSQLFormHandler, which is an instance of the class atg.droplet.sql.SimpleSQLFormHandler. A subclass of atg.droplet.GenericFormHandler, this class supports SQL database table queries, inserts, updates, and deletions. Q. Why the param parameter is used in Droplet? Ans. It is used for both i.e. request and input parameter. Q. Which droplet can be used to populate select box in DSP? Ans. For & ForEach droplet can be used to populate select box. Q. What is the input parameter type for ForEach droplet? Ans. Array is an input parameter for ForEach droplet. Q. Which method needs to be overridden while extending a droplet or writing custom droplet? Ans. Service method needs to be overridden. Q. What are Targetting droplets available in ATG? Ans. ATG provides five targeting servlet beans (droplet). Four of them use a targeter together a set of items from a content repository, and render the items on the page. They differ only in how many items they actually display. They are as follow. • • • • ATG

TargetingForEach displays all of the items returned by the targeter. TargetingFirst displays the first n items, where n is a number you specify. TargetingRange displays a range of items, such as the third through the seventh. TargetingRandom displays n items chosen randomly. Page 42

ATG Interview Question & Answer •

TargetingArray differs from the others because it does not format the output of the targeting operation. Instead, we have to use another servlet bean to format the output.

Q. What is the return type of Switch droplet? Ans. Switch droplet evaluates the input parameters and return String. Q. What is the use of TableForEachDroplet? Ans. Use of this droplet is as follow. 1. Displays each element of an array. 2. Arranging the output in a two-dimensional format. Q. what is the name of Droplet looks for an item in a specific repository based on item id & renders / return item on page? Ans. ItemLookupDroplet retrieves an item from specific repository by item-id. Q. what is the default location of java class and component in ATG? Ans. Java classes resides in lib folder and components are resides in config folder. Q. What is the use-case of ATG-Required in Manifest.MF file? Ans. Following are the usecases. a. Specifying modules on which this module depends. While running the application assembler, the modules listed here also are included in the application. b. When the application starts, the manifests of the modules listed here are processed before the current module’s, in least-dependent to most-dependent order.

Q. Can one Java class be made in to multiple components? Ans. Yes, one Java class can be used to make multiple components. Q. Where Component files are located in ATG module? Ans. Component files are located under /config directory. Q. Which component should a shareable component be registered with? Ans. /atg/multisite/SiteGroupManager Q. Identify the problem with the following targeter rule-set?

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Ans. Rules cannot contains two accept directives. Q. Which of the following two outcomes are achieved by the following snippet of code? Ans. Makes the Shipping Conf available to the EL through the name ShippingConf. Q. Which two DSP Tags can specify a tag converter? Ans. dsp:valueof and dsp:input Q. How does a developer preserve request scoped objects on redirects? Ans. By adding a_request id parameter to the form as a hidden variable.

Q. What is the best way to display the contents of an open parameter in a Custom Droplet? Ans. Use the request.serviceParameter method to render the open parameter.

Q. To encrypt userID cookie, what must you do? Ans. Edit propertycookieHashKey of/atg/userprofiling/CookieManager.

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ATG Interview Question & Answer Q. Consider the following code snippet:

To get an output of "Joe Bruin", What two methods should the droplet use in the code? a. getLocalParameter("first") and getLocalParamter("last") b. getParameter("first") and getLocalParameter("last") c. getLocalParameter("first") and getParameter("last") d. getPageParameter("first") and getParameter("last") Ans. B

Q. What are custom dsp tags? Ans. DSP tags are ready to use tags to render content dynamically by linking Nucleus components directly to your JSPs. Essentially, the DSP tag libraries let you connect your JSP content to the Java code at work behind the scenes so you can separate your application logic from your presentation layer. ATG provides you with three tag libraries JSTL, DSP/DSPEL, and Core. You can find these tag libraries in /DAS/taglib.

Q. Difference between dsp and dspel tags? Ans. The DSP tag library tags support runtime expressions, such as references to scripting variables. These tags use id attribute to name the scripting variables they create. The DSPEL tag library tags support JSTL Expression Language (EL) elements that are also evaluated at runtime. These tags often produce a result object named by the var attribute.

Q. How to write custom tag? Ans. For custom tags we need to write the properties file and a class files to define the functions. We need to include a tag file with extension .tld. (tag library definition) and in the page include the path of the tag uri <% tag uri ..%>. we can write a custom tag to calculate the shipping rate with promotion and save it and then extend wherever required.

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ATG Interview Question & Answer Q. What is ATG tag library? Ans. Atg tag library is a variant of jsp standard tag library. However atg provides its own set of tag libraries e.g. dsp, dspel and core.

Q. Difference between dsp:include and jsp:include? Ans. Dsp imports all objects of type class also, whereas jsp imports only primitive types. Jsp includes are dynamic where as dsp include are for data which is smaller than 64 kb. ATG created the DSP tag library as a mechanism for accessing all data types, including those that exist in ATG Nucleus framework. Other functions provided by these tags manage transactions and determine how data is rendered in a JSP. It is best to use tags from the DSP tag library only for tasks that involve Dynamo Application Framework (DAF) resources. Dsp tag support for the passing of object parameters between pages. In particular, use dsp:include rather than jsp:include, and use dsp:param rather than jsp:param.

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ATG Search Questions Q. What is ATG Search? Ans. ATG Search is a leading search engine which lets user search for required information on the website. Q. What are the basic features of ATG Search? Ans. These are the basic features of ATG search. –

Processes natural language queries

–

Supports faceted navigation in applications

–

Multiple language support

–

Industry-specific lexicons

–

Automated indexing features

–

Generating reports is easy using ATG Customer Intelligence

To know more about ATG search, refer document ATG Framework & Components

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ATG Publishing Questions Q. What is ATG publishing? Ans. ATG Content Administration (earlier known as ATG Publishing) is used for managing the content on the production website. It provides a streamlined system for modifying and deploying content on your site. The system maintains the versions for the changes made to publishable assets. It keeps track of multiple versions of publishable assets (scenarios or catalog items, for example) within specific publishing projects. To know more about ATG Publishing, refer document ATG Framework & Components. Q. What is BCC? Ans. The ATG Business Control Center is a browser-based interface that allows marketers and merchandizer to create and edit many of the elements required to maintain an ATG-based Web site. Q. What is ATG Merchandizing? Ans. ATG merchandising application runs on top of ATG Publishing and ATG Commerce. It provides a way to Commerce Business users for creating and maintaining versioned content of various items like ProductCatalog, Personalization targeters etc. Q. What is another name for ATG Content Administration? Ans. ATG Publishing Q. ATG content Administration also known as ……….? Ans. ATG Publishing Q. You are creating a primary table and an auxiliary table for an Item descriptor in the versioned schema. What are the properties that must be added to the tables? Ans. You need to add asset_version to both the tables in addition, the primary table required seven other columns, such as version_editable, version_deleted etc. Q. In order to ensure versioning integrity, a deploying project obtains exclusive locks on its assets when deployment starts. What is the effect of these locks? Ans. Until a project's asset locks are released, other projects that share those Assets cannot deploy. Q. Users of your site have provided login and date of birth upon registration. Out of the-box, what is the visibility of these fields to merchandisers? Ans. Both login and date of birth are visible to merchandisers in the BCC. ATG

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ATG Interview Question & Answer Q. Invoking Full Deployment on Production will cause ___________. Ans. ATG to flush and re apply data on the passive database, switch and then on the other database.

Q. Examine this scenario: * Joe adds an existing asset to a new project. * You add the same asset to a different project * Joe edits his working version of the asset and deploys his project. * The assets in Joe's project are checked in and constitute a new base version of those assets. What is the expected default behavior of the BCC? Ans. You must resolve the conflict before a production deployment can be made.

Q. The default Task for a merchandiser in ATG workflow after production deployment is complete is___. Ans. Verify Production Deployment

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ATG Order & Checkout Question Q. What is Order? Ans. Order is bean which contains all required information to process order like commerceItem, shipping address and payment information etc. Q. What is OrderHolder? Ans. OrderHolder is used to hold saved and current order. Q. What is ShoppingCart? Ans. ShoppingCart is an order in incomplete state. Q. What is OrderManager? Ans. There is a business layer class called as OrderManager which takes care of creating/loading/refreshing/updating the orders. To know more OrderManager, refer document ATG Framework & Components. Q. What is PaymentManager? Ans. PaymentManager is an interface to Payment Pipeline to talk to the third-party payment gateways to ensure that the CreditCard authorization/debit is handled seamlessly. Q. What is the OrderTools? Ans. OrderTools contains a set of properties that you can use to customize the purchase process. Q. What is Commerce Item? Ans. Commerce Item is a bean that contains information about SKU and quantity. Q. What is Shipping Group? Ans. Shipping Group contains the information about shipping address along with the commerce item supposed to be delivered at the same address. Q. What is Payment Group? Ans. Payment Group contains information about individual item cost, shipping cost, tax info and overall order cost. It also tells the mode of payment like CreditCard, Store Credit, Gift Card etc. Q. What is Relationship? Ans. Relationship is an association between two or more commerce objects. To know more about Relationship, refer document ATG Framework & Components. ATG

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ATG Interview Question & Answer Q. What is Handling Instructions? Ans. The HandlingInstruction interface describes special handling for a CommerceItem within a given ShippingGroup. Q. What is the default implementation of interface Order? Ans. The default implementation of Order interface is OrderImpl. Q. What are different types are Shipping Groups? Ans. There are by default 2 types of Shipping Groups. a. HardgoodShippingGroup b. ElectronicShippingGroup To know more about these ShippingGroups, refer document ATG Framework & Components Q. What are different types of Payment Groups? Ans. There are by default 3 types of Payment Group. a. CreditCard b. GiftCertificate c. Store Credit Q. What are different types of Relationships between commerce objects? Ans. There are by default 4 types of relationships. a. b. c. d.

ShippingGroupCommerceItemRelationship PaymentGroupCommerceItemRelationship PaymentGroupShippingGroupRelationship PaymentGroupOrderRelationship

To know more about these Relationships, refer document ATG Framework & Components Q. What are the Address classed used during Checkout process? Ans. The address classes used during checkout process is as follow.  

atg.core.util.Address atg.core.util.ContactInfo

Q. What is the important Business layer Components used during Checkout Process? Ans. Important Business layer components used during checkout process are as follow.  ATG

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ATG Interview Question & Answer       

OrderManager CommerceItemManager ShippingGroupManager HandlingInstructionManager PaymentGroupManager OrderQueries SimpleOrderManager

Q. What is the FormHandler to add an item in shopping cart? Ans. FormHandler name is CartModifierFormHandler. Q. What is the handle method of CartModifierFormHandler used to add item to Order? Ans. Method handleAddItemToOrder of CartModifierFormHandler is used to add item to order. Q. How to create new Order? Ans. OrderManager method i.e createOrder() can be used to create new order by passing the current profile Id. Q. How to re-price order? Ans. The handleAddXXX and handleRemoveXXX methods of CartModifierFormHandler automatically reprice the Order whenever the user makes changes in cart. Q. What is Commerce Pipeline & who starts this pipeline? Ans. The processing of an Order begins with a call from FormHandlers (CartModifierFormHandler) to OrderManager.processOrder() method. OrderManager.processOrder calls the PipelineManager to execute the processOrder pipeline which is configured in Commerce Pipeline.xml located at /config/atg/commerce/commercepipeline.xml Q. What is different type of Checkout? Ans. There are by default 3 types of Checkout. a. Express / Expedited Checkout b. Simple Checkout c. Complex Checkout To know more about Checkout, refer document ATG Framework & Component

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ATG Interview Question & Answer What is Order Pipeline? Ans. Order pipeline is used to process order. Order processing occurs when a customer has supplied all the necessary information for the Order and has submitted it for checkout. Q. What is Payment Pipeline? Ans. The Payment Process is handled by payment pipelines and payment pipeline is called by PaymentManager. It manages the authorization, debit, and credit of PaymentGroups in an Order. Q. What is order fulfillment? Ans. One of the processor in the commerce pipeline called sendOrderFulfillmentMessage, this message is goes on JMS and the legacy fulfillment system fulfill the order after receiving this message. Q. What is PricingModel? Ans. PricingModel is a repository item that describes a discount. To know more about PricingModel, refer document ATG Framework & Component Q. What is PMDL? Ans. PMDL stands for Price Model Definition Language. Q. What is the droplet use to display Price? Ans. PriceItemDroplet is used to calculate price dynamically and render it on the page. Q. What is the task of Pricing Calculator? Ans. Pricing calculators are responsible for the following tasks. 1. Looking up the price in the catalog by priceList. 2. Invoking a qualifier service that identifies the objects to discount. 3. Determine price using the information received from the engines and from the qualifier. Q. What is the role of the allocateItemRelQuantity chain? Ans. The role of allocateitemRelQuantity is to purchase items from pre-order, back order, or regular stock using inventory. Q. What is the reanimated order? Ans. Reanimated order is previously abandoned orders that have been modified by the customer in some way, such as adding items or changing item quantities.

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ATG Interview Question & Answer Q. What do you need to do to disable ATG's Out-of-the-Box behavior of persisting order change? Ans. Set /atg/commerce/ShoppingCart.persistOrders = false

Q. What is an Order in ATG? Ans. An order is a container for commerce items, shipping groups, payment groups and relationship objects.

Q. What is the ShoppingCart? Ans. It is a session scoped component for holding current and saved orders. The class of ShoppingCart component is OderHolder. Shopping.current contains the current order. ShoppingCart.saved contains saved orders.

Q. What is a commerce item? Ans. A commerce item is order item which holds the catalogRefId, quantity and productId.

Q. What are the steps to create a new commerce item type in the order repository definition? Ans. 1. First in the orderReposiry.xml, create an item descriptor by extending the default commerce item using inheritance concept such specifying super-type and sub-ty pe. And adding the new properties with new table under this item descriptor. 2. Next we will create a new java bean by extending the CommerceItemImpl and adding setters and getters for the properties created in the new commerce item itemdescriptor. 3. Next we will specify the new commerce item details in the OrderTools.properies. We will specify commerceItemTypeClassMap and beanNameToItemDescriptorMap

Q. How do u create the newly created commerce item type into the order? Ans. 1. We will setup a map of sku item types to the commerce item types in the Commerce ItemManager.properties.

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ATG Interview Question & Answer 2. Then we will override the CommerceItemManager createCommerceItem method. We will take the skuId (catalogRefId) and find its SKU item type and then from this name we will look up the map values in the CommerceItemManager.properties to search for its related commerceItem type to create. Q. How do you add an item to cart? Ans. Using addItemToOrder method of CartModifierFormHandler by passing catalogRefId, quantity and productId in the product details page.

Q. How do you display items in the cart page? Ans. We will get the current order from the ShoppingCart component. We will pass the ShoppingCart.current.commerceItems to the ForEach droplet to render the items in cart page.

Q. How do you update the quantity of a commerce item in the cart page? Ans. 1. First we will set CheckForChangedQuantity of the CartModifierFormHandler to true in the JSP page. And for the quantity field we will give the name as catalogRefId. 2. Finally, we will call handleSetOrder method of CartModifierFormHandler to update the quantity.

Q. How do you remove items from cart? Ans. We will set the removalCommerceIds property of CartModifierFormHandler to the items and call handleSetOrder method of CartModifierFormHandler. This is used to remove one or more items at the same time. To remove single item, use the handleRemoveItemFromOrder method of CartModifierFormHandler.

Q. How do you save the order or cart? Ans. We can use SaveOrderFormHandler to save the order. When we call handleSaveOrder method of SaveOrderFormHandler, the current order will be saved to the ShoppingCart.saved property and it will create a new order will be set to ShoppingCart.current.

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ATG Interview Question & Answer Q. How do you retrieve the saved order back to the current order? Ans. We can use ShoppingCart.switch method by passing handleOrderId which will look up the order from the order repository and set to the current order of ShoppingCart.

Q. How do you proceed to checkout page? Ans. We will call to moveToPurchaseInfo method of the CartModifierFormHandler which will execute the moveToPurchaseInfo pipeline chain and check the order and commerce items and validates them. Then, checkout login page will be displayed if the user has not logged yet. Otherwise user will be directed to the shipping page.

Q. How do you set the shipping address to the order or shipping group? Ans. We use the ShippingGroupDroplet to display all the available shipping addresses to user. The ShiipingGroupDroplet will get the available addresses from the Profile shipingAddress and secondaryAddresses properties. Then the user will select the shippingAddress from the list. Then the selected address will be set the current shipping group by calling the handleApplyShipping Groups method of ShippingGroupFormHandler. We can also create a shipping group manually by using ShippingGroupManager.createShippingGroup by passing the address. After that we ShippingGroupManager.addShippingGroupToOrder method to add this shippingGroup to order.

the call

The user will also select the shipping method and set to the shipping group such as NextDay , Two Day or Ground. We will use AvailableShippingMethods droplet which fetches all the shipping method names from the Shipping calculators. Each Shipping Calculator has a property called shippingMethod.

Q. What are the different relationship objects in the order? Ans. ShiipingGroupCommerceItemRelationShip, PaymentGroupCommerceItemRelationShip PaymentGroupShipingGroupRelationShip and PaymentGroupOrderRelationShip.

,

Q. How do you split items to multiple shipping addresses? Ans. We call the handleSpliShippingInfos method of ShippingGroupFormHandler to split the item quantity to different shipping group. Then we call handleApplyShippingGroups method of ShippingGroupFormHandler. If operation is successful then user will be taken to payment page.

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ATG Interview Question & Answer Q. What are different order states? Ans. These are default order states provided by ATG.

State Name

Description

APPROVED

The approval process for the order is complete, and the order has been approved.

FAILED

The order failed.

FAILED_APPROVAL

The approval process for the order is complete, and the order has been rejected.

INCOMPLETE

The order is in the purchase process.

NO_PENDING_ACTION

The order has been fulfilled, and processing of the order is complete. All shipping groups in the order are in a NO_PENDING_ACTION or REMOVED state, and order payment has been settled.

PENDING_APPROVAL

The order requires approval (or an additional approval) by an authorized approver.

PENDING_CUSTOMER_A CTION

Processing of the order requires the customer’s attention for some reason, such as an incorrect customer address.

PENDING_CUSTOMER_R ETURN

This is an unused state. It is placed in the list of states for the convenience of those who might want to implement this state.

PENDING_MERCHANT_A CTION

Processing of the order requires merchant attention for some reason, such as the failure of a payment group in the order.

PENDING_REMOVE

A request was made to remove the order. The order is placed in this state until all shipping groups in the order are set to a PENDING_REMOVE state.

PROCESSING

The order is being processed by Fulfillment.

QUOTED

This is an unused state. It is placed in the list of states for the convenience of those who might want to implement this state.

REMOVED

The order has been removed successfully.

SUBMITTED

The order has completed the purchase process and has been submitted to Fulfillment.

TEMPLATE

The order is a template order used by a scheduled order.

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ATG Profile Management Question Q. How to Design or create User Profile? Ans. The User Profile can be created by following ways.   

Extending the Commerce Profile Form Handler. Extending the repository i.e. userProfile.xml Profile groups or segments to be used to target the specific customers.

Q. What is the difference between Internal & External users? Ans. There difference is as follow.  

Internal users are the users given access to ATG applications like BCC or CSC for administration purpose. This user can be Merchandiser, Searchandiser or Call Center Agent External users are the customers shopping on your commerce site.

Q. What is the path of default external profile repository? Ans. Default external profile repository is /atg/userprofilling/ProfileAdapterRepository Q. What is personalization? Ans. Personalization means making contents private to user and ability to target content to specific user or user groups. Q. What is the name of FormHandler used for login? Ans. ProfileFormHandler is used for user login. The path of ProfileFormHandler is /atg/userprofilling/ProfieFormHandler. Q. How to check if active user in session is a logged in user or guest user? Ans. By checking the value of a property of Profile bean i.e. Profile.transient tells us whether the user is logged-in user or guest user. Q. What is the use of ProfileTools and PropertyManager? Ans. Profile tools & property manager provide additional methods to access commerce specific profile properties such as shipping and billing addresses and credit card information. Q. What is targeting in terms of personalization? Ans. Targeting is the process of displaying contents to a particular user, at a particular time, in a particular context.

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ATG Interview Question & Answer Q. How the Scenarios are used for Personalization? Ans. DSS adds advanced personalization features such as customer management scenarios, data analysis and reporting to the Dynamo framework. Scenarios are event-driven. Event element defines what the site visitor does, an Action element defines what the system does in response. Q. Where the scenario is stored? Ans. Scenarios are stores as .sdl file and can be found at path /atg/registry/data/scenarios. Q. What is the use of Content Targeter? Ans. Content targeter is use to target content to specific user based on rules defined. It matches content to specific users. Q. How to show personalized but dynamic content to individual user? Ans. Using Slot and Targeter we can show personalized dynamic contents to individual user. Q. How many current and saved orders does ATG allow a user profile to have? Ans. ATG allows one current order and a collection of saved orders per user profile.

Q. Important two features provided by the ATG Personalization module. Ans. User Profiling and content targeting.

Q. What is the name of the property in the customer profile that contains a list of Promotion Status Repository Items? Ans. activePromotions

Q. Which three methods are recommended for removing a profile marker from the profile? Ans. 1. The "deleteMarkers" method on the atg.markers.userprofiling.ProfileMarkerManager class 2. Use a scenario with tin-"Remove markers from profile" action. 3. Use the RemoveAllMarkersFromProfileDroplet.

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ATG Interview Question & Answer Q. What is the primary mechanism used by ATG to record user site navigation activity on the profile? Ans. Implicit ATG monitors all activities and keeps track of all user activity.

Q. In a multisite environment, what is the default sharing behavior of user profiles? Ans. They are shared across all the sites.

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Others Q. Which two ASE tasks can be performed from the ACC but not the BCC? Ans. Creating scenarios and Slots Q. Identify three features of Oracle ATG Adaptive Scenario Engine that drive personalized customer experience. Ans. These are 3 features of ATG Adaptive Scenario Engine. 1. Rule based content targetingincluding personalized recommendations, offers,information sells, up sells, promotions. 2. Business rule driven scenarios for delivering dynamic web pages. 3. Time & event based multistage scenarios. Q. Based on the property definition below, what are the possible values returned by the transaction Type property?

Ans. 999, 998, or 997

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Reference http://www.scribd.com/doc/82574621/ATG-Framework-and-Components http://www.scribd.com/doc/153449525/ATG-Auto-Complete-Type-Ahead http://www.scribd.com/doc/111773014/Search-Engine-Optimization-SEO

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ATG Interview Question and Answer

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