BusinessObjects Board

Business Objects Contractor Questions

:?:
I have recently decided to take my life into my own hands and look for contracting work rather than permanent jobs.

I have an interview coming up and have been told there will be some sort of test on my knowledge of Business Objects Designer and Supervisor tools and Web Intelligence report creation. Has anyone else had to take one of these test, or given one? and if so do you have any example questions/answers I could look at? :oops:

Any help would be very much appreciated.

Thanks


Anthea (BOB member since 2004-06-29)

It depends on what they are bringing you infor. Things I was tested for,

  • Give senerio and then had to right the sql freedhand to get the data.
  • Given a report to look and asked to identify why it was not pulling in the correct data, in this case it was the joins they had to implement security.
  • Ask you describe a fan and chasm trap how would you resolve it.
  • Explain calculation contexts when to use them.
  • Explain about contexts generally and when to use them.
  • Common problems to look out for.
  • Create new users in Supervisor
  • Schedule a report.

As long as you are not a total novice with a couple of months BO experience you should be ok.


Rich :uk: (BOB member since 2002-10-04)

We’ve discussed interviews in general many times before, so I’d suggest a search. One picky thing, your attention to detail needs to be excellent. You misspelt the word contractor…!

Be confident in your own skills and you’ll be fine.


Nick Daniels :uk: (BOB member since 2002-08-15)

:smiley: Thankyou for your suggestions

I have tried searching this forum for information on interviews but only came up with other threads were people were told to do a search on interviews.

I did however read one helpful thread where it was clearly stated this forum isn’t used for this type of discussion anyway. :oops:

Thanks again for your help.


Anthea (BOB member since 2004-06-29)

Try these topics:



Dave Rathbun :us: (BOB member since 2002-06-06)

:mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen:

The world is indeed a wonderful place and YOU are one of the wonderful people in it.


Anthea (BOB member since 2004-06-29)

Many of these questions are covered in the training classes taught by Integra Solutions. If you have taken their classes, you can find the answers in the training materials. :smiley:

simon.


substring :us: (BOB member since 2004-01-16)

Just to be fair…

The classes taught by Integra are very good. However, they teach the same material taught by every other authorized training center. Many of the training partners have excellent instructors.

So, don’ think that you can only get good materials and instructors by using Integra.

Sorry, Dave.


Steve Krandel :us: (BOB member since 2002-06-25)

You can watch some questions below:

Here they are:

Business Objects

  1. What is an Universe?

  2. How many Universes did you create?

  3. Tell me how many classes where there, and objects in each class?

  4. What is Object qualification?

  5. Tell me about a complicated object you have created?

  6. What was the size of the database? which server?

  7. How many user were there?

  8. What problems you have faced while creating an universe? tell me
    an incident and how you went about solving it?

  9. Were any experts called from BO while you were on the project?

  10. What was the Database. Was it a data warehouse?

  11. How many Tables was the universe built?

  12. What is a loop, how do you resolve them?

  13. What do prefer an Alias or an context? why?

  14. What is join? Explain different types of joins?

  15. What are linked universes? have you worked with them,
    problems faced and solutions?

  16. How many reports have you created? Explain a few?

  17. What are alerters, filters, breaks, master-detail?

  18. What’s the difference between master-detail and Breaks?

  19. What’s the difference between filters and conditions?

  20. what are pre-defined conditions? compare with report conditions? Justify?

  21. What are the differences between a formula, variable and user objects?

  22. Did you face any problems while creating reports? Name? Solutions?

  23. How do you schedule the reports?

  24. How were the reports scheduled and how to resolve unexecuted documents?

  25. What is a microcube? how many can a document have?

  26. Have you worked with multiple data sources? If yes. How do you link them?

  27. What are templates? Explain what you have created?

Thanks,
Raj,
raja.s@rediffmail.com.


mailkumarraja (BOB member since 2004-08-05)

This is an old thread, but I wanted to add something here. I worked for many years at the mother ship (if you know what I mean), and one of the things that always bothered me was the lack of depth, in some of the consultants that we sometimes fielded. The first question I would definitely ask of a Business Objects’ consultant (umm, besides, you do know Business Objects, right?) is, really not a question, but I would ask how he/she took a deployment from an idea into full production. I think this is the acid test. BI is a wonderful thing. It has been likened to having a baby. First comes the good news (we’re having BI!) followed by the back-slapping, and the laughing. Then, comes the screaming, and the yelling, and poof! There is it is, in all its glory-- the BI baby with all its promises. This all after much pain. I would ask how they got through the pain.

Ang.


angelsd1 :us: (BOB member since 2005-10-21)

The only difference is that with children you don’t get a redo with giving birth and turning around your shortcomings multiple times! :hb:


Eileen King :us: (BOB member since 2002-07-10)

Hmm

Would having Twins be considered “scope creep”? :lol:


Mark McBride :us: (BOB member since 2002-09-05)

I never though about remembering them all for interviews! :shock:
Are they important questions ?


darjman (BOB member since 2005-04-28)

Question 7 and 15 (15 is far more important) give a clue into universe complexity.

Question 11 is useful. More users generally means a more useful universe. If it’s too hard to use, people don’t use it.

Question 10 is not terribly relevant, but it does speak to performance tuning.


Steve Krandel :us: (BOB member since 2002-06-25)

You know what… I’m such a Pollyanna. I left big corporate America 10 years ago for the nomadic life of a contractor, specializing in all things data intensive, primarily BI. I have never prepared for an interview, beyond learning something about the client. I don’t know if I should be proud of that or not, but I’ve gotten every job I have ever interviewed for and made a very good living. Only a 4 day gap between my last 2 contracts. It’s getting the interview that’s getting harder and harder.

I find that experience and being able to think on your feet is the best way to prove who you are and what you can do. Studying things I’ve never actually done makes me look rehearsed and sort of confused :crazy_face: . If I can explain the concept, I do. If I’ve never actually had my hands on the tool, I say so, making sure they know how much I want to learn new things. But I also make a big point of all of the other tools I’ve been exposed to over the years and how successful I’ve been with all of them.

Interview over your current level but never try to convince the client you know more than you actually do. You’ll look dishonest and then they will doubt you on everything. Let them know that you are excited to grow. I find that people respond very well to honesty, flexibility, adventurousness (sp?), and excitement.


datagal :us: (BOB member since 2005-12-21)

I am standing in front of my computer and clapping my hands right now. Bravo! Thanks for such a great response. :yesnod:


Dave Rathbun :us: (BOB member since 2002-06-06)

I actually have two funny anecdotes as complete opposites to the above most excellent response. One of our consultants was “phone interviewed” before showing up for a scheduled gig. Two (2) hours into the interview the prospective “client” announce, “o.k., we have enough, thanks!” After they cancelled the engagement, we found out that they had used the interview to fix their environment issues and did not need the consultant on site anymore. On another occasion, I was put in the center of this IT question-and-answer circle, and for four (yup, 4) hours, the session went something like this, “umm; question number 103, of 234, explain in two sentences or less, hyper-dynamic cubing…” Sometimes it is definitely not fun interviewing for BI work! :smiley:

Ang.


angelsd1 :us: (BOB member since 2005-10-21)

Been there too. It only happens once. 8) That’s the saying, right? Fool me once, shame on you… fool me twice, shame on me.

Now I will admit I’ve never been on either side of one of those… doesn’t sound like much fun. For some reason it reminds me of the Dilbert cartoon, where the pointy-haired boss comes in and announces, “We should get a SQL database.” Dilbert assumes that he has no clue what he’s asking, so in the next frame he asks, “What color?” The pointy-haired boss says, “I hear that mauve is the fasted.” :rotf:

I would be templated at about question 222 of 234 to throw out something completely stupid just to see if they were really listening. :stuck_out_tongue:


Dave Rathbun :us: (BOB member since 2002-06-06)

Whatever are they trying to find out in 234 questions ?? I would start forgetting what I know after an hour of interrogation …
In that case, they should save energy and have a written exam. Also, whats the point of asking grandiose theory and the likes when the “on the job” reality maybe totally something else ?

Anyway, on the other hand, if the above type of mega interviews are a widespread practise then this

would definitely not be a good strategy to adopt for someone looking for a job.


darjman (BOB member since 2005-04-28)

Hi, i am relatively new user of Business Objects, I guess www.geekinterview.com should definitely help you there are around 100+ questions there with the answers. ALL THE BEST MATE!!!

CHEERS :lol:


surez3000 (BOB member since 2006-04-11)