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Bruce GustFlag for United States of America

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I've got an interview this morning and I want to sound intelligent...

Morning, EE!

I've got an interview this morning and the potential employer describes the contract to my recruiter like this:

SQL injection remediation
Retrofit for existing web services
PDO Library
Almost entirely backend
Front end is JavaScript

I want to bounce off, whoever is willing to contribute this am, my thoughts and ask for any additional things that you might see which would constitute a healthy addition to the conversation.

First off, Prepared Statements - being able to prevent SQL Injection by running your SQL w/o any data attached to it and binding your incoming criteria using positional or named placeholders.

Asking about their current database configuration. There's a lot of .NET mentioned, so I'm assuming they're using a SQL database. Do they have some Stored Procedures in place? Is there an approach that allows for a "retrofit" that accommodates already existing code / infrastructure so you're not having to reinvent the wheel?

I know enough about PDO to appreciate the Database Abstraction Layer and the Prepared Statements, but what else would I want to be sensitive to, given the job description, as far as what they mention in terms of "retrofitting?"

The phrase "web services" was mentioned. I don't know if that's a generic term to describe already existing web structure or they're referring to an API that's communicating via XML (https://www.tutorialspoint.com/webservices/what_are_web_services.htm). What kind of situation would that be?

They mention JavaScript. I'm not sure if that's basic functionality / aesthetics or if there's some JSON that will need to be interacted with.

What kind of questions would you ask? Does this job description sound like something you've done before? What kind of wisdom would you want to share with someone like who's just walking in?

What do you think?
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Ray Paseur
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Ray, if I get the gig, I'm sending you a gift card!

Thank you!
Ray!

I got the job! As a quick aside, I've recently experienced a bit of an epiphany and you had something to do with that.

Rarely do you answer questions with just a solution. There's always some explanation as well as an admonishment to understand WHY something works and not just THAT it works. While I've always appreciated it, I was usually too preoccupied with getting something out the door than I was parking for a while and really evaluating syntax, flow and theory.

I've been attending a local User's Group thanks to neighbor of mine who's a very capable .NET engineer. Though those meetings, I've been able to determine I'm not as sharp as I need to be when it comes to understanding concepts, terms and best practices. It's not a comfortable thing to admit, but it's a healthy thing nevertheless. I've been making an effort recently to remedy that in the context of copious notes and a lot of drilling down. This has been my routine for the last three months.

This last interview, I was far more confident when it came to the "tech" part of the conversation. Rather than dreading what I might be asked, I felt much better in being able to answer whatever questions they had. Not just because I had done it, but because I could explain back to them the process / code without sounding hesitant.

This last interview was as I had explained it in the context of the question you answered. The tech part of the process was pretty basic, but it was only basic because of having really applied myself as of late as well as your suggestions.

So, all that to say: I got the gig and there's a steady paycheck in place once again. Shoot me your email address and let me buy you a cup of coffee.

Thanks!
Congratulations!

If you need to locate me, my contact information is publicly available in my profile.  But to save time: Ray.Paseur [at] GMail.com