That's how I torture the BizTalk developer during the technical interview.
The interview is very intensive and takes 1-1.5 hour.
The main principle:
quick question - quick answer/demonstration.
The main goal:
range the main skills in all areas of the BizTalk generic development
General questions:
How does contender understand:
* the general architecture of the BizTalk:
= enumerate the main parts of the BizTalk system
= describe the main intentions of the BizTalk
* artifacts, terms (enumerate them):
= quick description
- application
- ports, groups, locations
- pipelines
- schemas
- maps
- orchestrations:
- shapes
- transactions:
- atomic
- long-running
- compensation
- exceptions
- persistent points
- assemblies
- helper .NET classes
- data bases, servers
- hosts, instances
- adapters, handlers
- subscribers, publishers
- parties
- EDI, AS2 system
- rules, vocabularies, policies
= now couple words more, what contender likes/doesn't like in this artifact/tool. (Don't laugh, it is a silly and VERY tough question.)
* what's going on inside BizTalk
* how do you study BizTalk? what are the main sources of the information?
How develop with different parts of BizTalk:
= Describe creating the full-featured BizTalk application.
= create the thing, show what's the most interesting inside the artifact and/or inside the tool
= quick description and couple words more, what contender likes/doesn't like in this artifact/tool.
* VS, Source Safe
* Schema editor
- flat-files, EDI
* Mapper
- Xslt
* Orchestration Editor
* Business Rule Composer
* Tracking Profile Editor
Debugging the BizTalk Application:
= Describe debugging the full-featured BizTalk application.
* Enumerate tools:
* VS
* DebugView
* HAT, BTS Adm.Console
* NUnit, BizUnit, LoadGen
* Debugging artifacts:
- application
- ports
- pipelines
- schemas
- maps
- orchestrations
- helper .NET classes
- BR policy
Deploying the BizTalk application:
= Describe deploying the full-featured BizTalk application.
* BTSTask, BTSDeploy
* WMI scripts
* Wizards
Monitoring the BizTalk application:
2004 BTS: HAT, BizTalk Adm.Console, PerfMon
2006 BTS: HAT, BizTalk Adm.Console, PerfMon
BAM:
= Describe creating the tracking profile, activity, views.
Programming skills:
* bear route problem or similar
* bubble sort algorithm
* test-driven programming
* VS.NET tune-up
* script languages, utils
* SQL: database normalization, programming
Architecture skills:
* ways to achieve the goals:
= Say the ways to track the work times of the stages
* standard applications:
- workflow with several messages
- correlation
- convoys: parallel; sequential unified; sequential non unified
- instance vs. active subscription
- custom correlation
- FIFO
- BizTalk to/from SQL app:
- send data to SQL
- receive data from SQL
- query SQL data
- where to validate data?
- schemas, ports
- BizTalk to/from WS/HTTP apps
- SOAP ports, artifacts, wizards
* error handling in the BizTalk applications
= what else inside the BizTalk set tools the contender used and dig up those areas.
There is a good article by Richard Seroter
[BizTalk] Interview Advice (
http://seroter.wordpress.com/2007/07/27/biztalk-interview-advice/)