Mainframe interview questions for 3.5+ years experienced?

[Mamta LDH]

Hi,

Could anyone please help me in guiding that what are the frequently or mostly asked Mainframe interview questions for someone 3.5+ years experienced? Any help in this regard is highly appreciated.

[Anuj Dhawan]

There is no single answer I can think for this. I'd believe it mostly depends on what position the employer is trying to fill in, depending on that the questions would differ. If you are applying for an application developer position and the job involves COBOL, JCL and DB2 - following can possibly, but not limited to, be considered as sample questions:

1. How many Divisions are there in a COBOL program, please name them?
2. Are all the divisions mandatory and are required to fall in some sequence?
3. How do you define a Table in COBOL?
4. What is the difference between a Subscript and an Index?
5. If a Table is not defined with an Index, how can you refer to a specific occurrence of the table?
6. Give a pseudo code for a two file match program in COBOL?
7. Questions of PERFORM, SELECT clause, comp and comp-3.

For JCL

1. Difference between a PROC and a Job?
2. Questions about positional and keyword parameters. You might read more about them here - http://zmainframes.com/zlog/introduction-to-jcl/ and here - http://zmainframes.com/zlog/jcl-stateme ... statement/.
3. Questions about GDGs.
4. RESTART parameter.

For DB2:

1. What is the difference between DB2 and IMS database, conceptually?
2. What is the structure of a COBOL-DB2 program?
3. How do you execute a COBOL-DB2 program?
4. What is IKJEFT01?
5. Questions around SQL codes and RDBMS concepts.

You understand that these are just sample questions.