Some gamy questions?

Q1: When is a language considered a scripting language?

Ans: 
        Traditionally, when talking about the difference about scripting versus programming, scripts are interpreted and programs are compiled. A language can be executed in different ways - interpreted or compiled (to bytecode or machine code). This does not make a language one or another.

In some eyes, the way you use a language makes it a scripting language (for example, game developers who develop mainly in C++ will script the objects in Lua). Again, the lines are blurred - a language can be used for a programming by one person and the same language can be used for scripting language by another.

Q2: What is the difference between HTML tags DIV and SPAN?

Ans:     

         This means that to use them semantically, divs should be used to wrap sections of a document, while spans should be used to wrap small portions of text, images, etc.
                                                                   OR
<div> is a block-level element and <span> is an inline element.
If you wanted to do something with some inline text, <span> is the way to go since it will not introduce line breaks that a <div> would.

Q3: What Differences Between HTML and XHTML?

Ans: 
       The most important difference between the two markup languages is that HyperText Markup Language, or HTML, is an application of SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language),1 and allows an author to omit certain tags and use attribute minimization.2 The Extensible HyperText Markup Language, or XHTML, is an application of XML (Extensible Markup Language).3 It doesn’t permit the omission of any tags or the use of attribute minimization. However, it provides a shorthand notation for empty elements—for example, we could use <br/> instead of <br></br>—which HTML does not. A conforming XML document must be well formed, which, among other things, means that there must be an end tag for every start tag, and that nested tags must be closed in the right order.4 When an XML parser encounters an error relating to the document’s well-formedness, it must abort, whereas an HTML parser is expected to attempt to recover and continue.

There are three areas in which the differences between HTML and XHTML affect our use of CSS:

case sensitivity
optional tags
properties for the root element

Q4: What are Associative Arrays?

Ans:
      Associative arrays are arrays that use named keys that you assign to them.

There are two ways to create an associative array: 

$age=array("Peter"=>"35","Ben"=>"37","Joe"=>"43");
or:
$age['Peter']="35";
$age['Ben']="37";
$age['Joe']="43";

The named keys can then be used in a script:

Q5: What is htaccess?

Ans:
       Hypertext Access, commonly shortened to htaccess, is a powerful configuration file which controls the directory it is placed in and all the subdirectories underneath it.
htaccess, useful feature allowing webmasters to control how many aspects of their website works.

Using .htaccess files lets you control the behavior of your site or a specific directory on your site. For example, if you place an .htaccess file in your root directory, it will affect your entire site (www.coolexample.com). If you place it in a /content directory, it will only affect that directory (www.coolexample.com/content).

.htaccess works on our Linux servers.

Using an .htaccess file, you can:

Customize the Error pages for your site.
Protect your site with a password.
Enable server-side includes.
Deny access to your site based on IP.
Change your default directory page (index.html).
Redirect visitors to another page.
Prevent directory listing.
Add MIME types.
.htaccess files are a simple ASCII text file with the name .htaccess. It is not an extension like .html or .txt. The entire file name is .htaccess.

Q6: What is a RECURSIVE Function in PHP?

Ans:
      Definition: A recursive function is a function that calls itself.

A bit more in depth:
                   If the function keeps calling itself, how does it know when to stop? You set up a condition, known as a base case. Base cases tell our recursive call when to stop, otherwise it will loop infinitely.

What was a good learning example for me, since I have a strong background in math, was factorial. By the comments below, it seems the factorial function may be a bit too much, I'll leave it here just in case you wanted it.

function fact($n) {
  if ($n === 0) { // our base case
     return 1;
  }
  else {
     return $n * fact($n-1); // <--calling itself.
  }
}

Q7: Difference between MVC and 3 tier Architecture?

Ans: 
      At first glance, the three tiers may seem similar to the model-view-controller (MVC) concept; however, topologically they are different. A fundamental rule in three tier architecture is the client tier never communicates directly with the data tier; in a three-tier model all communication must pass through the middle tier. Conceptually the three-tier architecture is linear. However, the [model-view-controller] MVC architecture is triangular: the view sends updates to the controller, the controller updates the model, and the view gets updated directly from the model.

Q8: How to find second highest or maximum salary of Employee in MySql?

Ans: 
       There are many ways to find second highest salary based upon which database you are using as different database provides different feature which can be used to find second maximum or Nth maximum salary of employee. Well this question can also be generalized with other scenario like finding second maximum age etc. To find second highest salary independent of databases or you may call in ANSI SQL and other SQL queries which uses database specific feature to find second maximum salary.

SQL query to find second maximum salary of Employee

In this section we will write SQL query to get second highest salary of Employee. Before writing query its good to be familiar with schema as well as data in table. Here is the Employee table we will be using this SQL example:

mysql> SELECT * FROM Employee;
+--------+----------+---------+--------+
| emp_id | emp_name | dept_id | salary |
+--------+----------+---------+--------+
| 1      | James    | 10      |   2000 |
| 2      | Jack     | 10      |   4000 |
| 3      | Henry    | 11      |   6000 |
| 4      | Tom      | 11      |   8000 |
+--------+----------+---------+--------+
4 rows IN SET (0.00 sec)

If you look data, you will find that second maximum salary in this case is 6000 and employee name is Henry. Now let’s see some SQL example to find out this second maximum salary.

Second maximum salary using sub query and IN clause

Sub queries in SQL are great tool for this kind of scenario, here we first select maximum salary and then another maximum excluding result of sub query.

mysql> SELECT max(salary) FROM Employee WHERE salary NOT IN (SELECT max(salary) FROM Employee);
+-------------+
| max(salary) |
+-------------+
|        6000 |
+-------------+
1 row IN SET (0.00 sec)

Here is another SQL query to find second highest salary using subquery and < operator instead of IN clause:

mysql> SELECT max(salary) FROM Employee WHERE salary < (SELECT max(salary) FROM Employee);
+-------------+
| max(salary) |
+-------------+
|        6000 |
+-------------+
1 row IN SET (0.00 sec)

Both of above SQL example will work on all database including Oracle, MySQL, Sybase and SQL Server as they are written using standard SQL keywords. But sometime you can also use database specific features like TOP keyword of SQL Server or Sybase database to find out second highest salary of Employee.

Second highest salary using TOP keyword of Sybase or SQL Server database

TOP keyword of Sybase and SQL Server database is used to select top record or row of any result set, by carefully using TOP keyword you can find out second maximum or Nth maximum salary as shown below.

SELECT TOP 1 salary FROM ( SELECT TOP 2 salary FROM employees ORDER BY salary DESC) AS emp ORDER BY salary ASC

Here is what this SQL query is doing : First find out top 2 salary from Employee  table and list them in descending order, Now second highest salary of employee is at top so just take that value. Though you need to keep in mind of using distinct keyword if there are more than one employee with top salary, because in that case same salary will be repeated and TOP 2 may list same salary twice.

Second maximum salary using LIMIT keyword of MYSQL database

LIMIT keyword of MySQL database is little bit similar with TOP keyword of SQL Server database and allows to take only certain rows from result set. If you look at below SQL example, its very much similar to SQL Server TOP keyword example.

mysql> SELECT salary  FROM (SELECT salary FROM Employee ORDER BY salary DESC LIMIT 2) AS emp ORDER BY salary LIMIT 1;
+--------+
| salary |
+--------+
|   6000 |
+--------+
1 row IN SET (0.00 sec)

That’s on How to find second highest salary of Employee using SQL query. 

PHP array pagination

This is a basic script to take an array and and generate a paginated list of items. This is quite an obscure example because a real world example would probably include lots more data.

I'd also like to say, if your working with databases then I would suggest using a database pagination script that uses limits etc to optimise the speed of the query etc. If your looking to paginate a small data set then this should be fine.

Pretty simple setup:

Include the class:

// Include the pagination class
include 'pagination.class.php';

Here i'm throwing in some test date (you will need to provide your own)

// some example data
foreach (range(1, 100) as $value) {
  $products[] = array(
  'Product' => 'Product '.$value,
  'Price' => rand(100, 1000),
  );
}

Then this is how to output of the page data and page numbers.

// If we have an array with items
if (count($products)) {
    // Create the pagination object
    $pagination = new pagination($products, (isset($_GET['page']) ? $_GET['page'] : 1), 15);
    // Parse through the pagination class
    $productPages = $pagination->getResults();
    // If we have items 
    if (count($productPages) != 0) {
        // Create the page numbers
        echo $pageNumbers = '<div class="numbers">'.$pagination->getLinks().'</div>';
        // Loop through all the items in the array
        foreach ($productPages as $productArray) {
            // Show the information about the item
            echo '<p><b>'.$productArray['Product'].'</b> &nbsp; &pound;'.$productArray['Price'].'</p>';
        }
        // print out the page numbers beneath the results
        echo $pageNumbers;
    }
}

There are two other configurations that currently exist:

If you would like to show "<< first" and "last >>" links to take you to the first and last page.

$pagination->setShowFirstAndLast(true);

The default separator for the page numbers is an empty string, you can overwrite this to be anything you like.

$pagination->setMainSeperator(' | ');

It's pretty simple.

Download Complete Script in Zip from here: https://app.box.com/s/8an37ogzo915p3rnz3ej

This article Taken from: http://lotsofcode.com/php-array-pagination/