Mainframe Interview Master Questions
COBOL Basics
- What are the four divisions of a COBOL program?
- What is the difference between PIC 9(4) and PIC X(4)?
- What is a level number in COBOL? Explain usage of 01, 77, 88, and 66.
- What is the use of the REDEFINES clause?
COBOL Intermediate
- Difference between CALL BY CONTENT and CALL BY REFERENCE.
- What is the purpose of EVALUATE? Compare it with IF...ELSE.
- Explain OCCURS DEPENDING ON and its restrictions.
- When do you use PERFORM UNTIL, PERFORM VARYING?
COBOL Advanced (Scenario-based)
- How do you handle a S0C7 ABEND? What tools will you use to find the cause?
- A program processes a 100K record file and abends at record 65,432. How do you restart it from that record?
- What is the impact of ALTER inside a COBOL program?
- How to design a program that must roll back changes to DB2 if a logic error occurs mid-way?
JCL Basics
- What is the difference between JOBLIB and STEPLIB?
- What does COND=(4,LT) mean?
- What are the different types of JCL statements?
JCL Intermediate
- How do you pass a parameter from JCL to a COBOL program?
- What is the use of DD DISP=MOD?
- How do you continue a job step even if the previous one fails?
JCL Advanced (Scenario-based)
- A job is abending, but there are no error messages in the spool. How will you debug?
Mainframe Interview Master Questions
- What happens if you omit SYSIN and SYSPRINT in a SORT step?
- How would you override a PROC parameter at runtime?
DB2 Basics
- What is the difference between CHAR and VARCHAR?
- What is a cursor? When do you use it?
- What is the significance of WITH HOLD and FOR UPDATE OF in cursor?
DB2 Intermediate
- What is a lock and what are the types in DB2?
- What is SQLCODE -911, -913, -811 and how do you handle them?
- What is the difference between INNER JOIN, LEFT JOIN, and UNION?
DB2 Advanced (Scenario-based)
- A program gives -911 error under load. How do you handle concurrency?
- You are required to retrieve the 3rd highest salary from the EMP table. Write the SQL.
- If a batch job fails mid-update, how do you ensure the next run continues without duplication?
VSAM Must-Know Questions
- What is the difference between KSDS, ESDS, and RRDS?
- How do you define a VSAM dataset?
- How do you read a KSDS file sequentially? Randomly?
- What is the difference between REWRITE, DELETE, and START?
Integration and CICS Questions
- What is the difference between LINK, XCTL, and CALL?
- Explain a scenario where a CICS program updates DB2, and then calls another program.
- How do you handle pseudo-conversational programming in CICS?
- What is an MRO environment in CICS?
Mainframe Interview Master Questions
Performance & Production Support
- Your job took 3 hours to complete today vs. 1 hour yesterday. What will you check?
- A monthly job failed during end-of-day processing. How do you handle the incident?
- What are the techniques for performance tuning in COBOL?
- How do you handle a loop in a COBOL program that's causing a job hang?
Final Key Concepts
- Steps to compile a COBOL-DB2 program.
- Difference between static and dynamic call in COBOL.
- Explain the full flow from JCL COBOL DB2 Output.
- How do you handle nulls in DB2 when passing to COBOL?
- What is a PLAN, PACKAGE, and COLLECTION in DB2?
- What is the difference between an INLINE PERFORM and SECTION PERFORM?
