CTS Mainframe Interview Questions

These Questions have been asked in Cognizant(CTS) for Mainframes Technical round of Interview.

CICS & VSAM–>

  1. What is the MAX size of COMMAREA?
  2. What happens if we try to send the data with size more than 32k?
  3. While passing data between two programs(PGMA TO PGMB) using COMMAREA. If in PGMA The commarea size is 30 and in PGMB it is defined as 60. Does it causes any issues due to this varying sizes?
  4. What is NOHANDLE? Have you ever used it?
  5. What is Alternative Index in VSAM?
  6. In VSAM KSDS, how to read a file using Alternative index?
  7. How an AIX can be defined? What are the Steps involved in that?
  8. I have a file which is having some data and the requirement is to read the data from the file and send it to the screen. Tell me the steps involved?
  9. How to read a VSAM file in reverse order?
  10. How to Update a file in CICS program?
  11. How a KSDS, ESDS and RRDS are defined? Tell me the differences in defining these?
  12. What is CEDF and where we will use it?
  13. What is CECI and its uses?
  14. What is two point COMMIT?
  15. Can we use a COMMIT in CICS DB2 program?
  16. What is MDT & how important it is in CICS MAp programs?
  17. I want to place the cursor on a specific field? How can we do that?
  18. What are the different methods of cursor positioning?
  19. What is ATI(Attention Identifier)?
  20. What is a TSQ and tell me an example where you have used it? How can we access a TSQ?
  21. Can we check the contents of a TSQ in CICS?
  22. Are TSQs needs to be defined to CICS? If so where it should be defined ?
  23. What are TDQs? What is the Diff. between Intra partition and Extra partition TDQs?
  24. Where a TDQ should be defined?
  25. Can a CALL statement be used in CICS programs?
  26. What is LINK and XCTL? How they are different.?
  27. How to Use CICS files in Batch? What share options we should give in this case?
  28. Different ways of a transaction initiation?
  29. What is MAP and Mapset. and How a MAPSET , MAP and Fields are defined? Tell me different keywords that are used while defining.
  30. Have you ever coded scrolling logic in CICS, Tell the the process?
  31. What is DFHAID and tell me the different components that it contains?
  32. I have modified a CICS program which is having a MAP. When I execute it, it gave me error. Tell me the possible errors that can occur?
  33. In VSAM file, I have done a read Previous and immediately I did a read Next. Then which record gets read?
  34. I have a VSAM file and how can this be processed to get all the records? Tell me the statements to be coded?
  35. How to check whether any data has been received from the terminal or not?
  36. What are different control tables?
  37. Where a DB2 related data needs to be defined in CICS?
  38. What is VSAM error code 22?
  39. What is ASRA?
  40. What is AEY9?

DB2 –> 

  1. Tell me few performance improvement ideas that can be implemented on a DB2 query?
  2. What is the COBOL DB2 CICS program compilation process?
  3. Can the CICS translator be executed before the Pre-compilation?
  4. Tell me the DB2 BIND process?
  5. What are the different Isolation levels? Brief each of them
  6. How a RR isolation level differs from RS isolation level?
  7. What is -811, -818, -803, -805?
  8. What is a Foreign Key and what are the constraints that can be defined on it?
  9. What is copy pending and Check pending?
  10. How to find the 2nd MAX salary from a table?
  11. What is the difference between UNION and UNION ALL?
  12. in a COBOL DB2 program I have opened the cursor and after processing few more lines of code, the cursor got closed. What might be the possible reasons and what should we do to avoid it?
  13. IN a dept table , i want to display the Sum of all the employee salaries department wise. How can we do that?
  14. To get unique rows , what keyword should we use?
  15. What is the size of a Timestamp in DB2?
  16. What is the SIZE of DATE IN db2?
  17. What is a NULL value and how to handle it?
  18. I have a name column defined and in that I want to retrieve all the names that starts with Reddy, How can we do that?

COBOL –> 

  1. I have DB2 fied DEFINED as DECIMAL(9,2) WHAT is its size?
  2. What is the bytes occupied by S9(9) V 9(2) COMP-3?
  3. iF THE ABOVE ONE IS OF comp WHAT IS THE ZISE?
  4. Difference between COMP and COMP-3?

JCL –> 

  1. I have 5 steps in a JCL and I want to execute 2, 4 and 5th Steps.. How can we do that?
  2. How to restart a job which failed in 5th step of a Proc.
  3. What are GDGs? How to define them?
  4. I have 5 steps in a job.. I am creating a GDG version in 3rd step and referring that in 5th step as input and creating another version in that step.. So what versions I should keep in the steps?
  5. If it failed in 4th step .. how versions should be changed while restarting?
  6. what is DISP = OLD, can we write into it when it is opened in OLD mode.?
  7. How to create a temporary dataset.. And If I create a temp. data set in one step and that needs to be accessed in the next step. How can we do that?
  8. What are procs? and different types of Procs.. What is the diff. between them?
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