research questions are not interview questions mule design

Erika Hall is the co-founder and Director of Strategy at Mule Design and the author of Just Enough Research. Her consulting practice focuses on helping organizations make better, more evidence-based decisions.

Stephen Bau

Just enough research.

Erika Hall is the co-founder and Director of Strategy at Mule Design.

Her consulting practice focuses on helping organizations make better, more evidence-based decisions.

She is the author of Just Enough Research , now in its second edition, and Conversational Design , both from A Book Apart. Erika loves helping people overcome the often invisible organizational barriers to doing good work.

Presentations

Design with words.

The tools and practices that carried over from graphic design have worked well for us in software design since the advent of graphic user interfaces. However, that time may be coming to an end.

Beyond Measure

Even though everything is measurable, and almost everything we do is generating data, human problems often require illogical approaches. A good story is more powerful than a stack of facts.

At An Event Apart Orlando, Erika Hall presented her talk, Just Enough Research, makes the case for doing the research necessary to help the products, services, or interfaces we design in the safety and comfort of our workplaces to survive and thrive in the real world.

Asking Why (PopTech 2015)

Designers must also be philosophers, and asking “why?” is our most vital tool.

Chapter 8: Analysis and Models

Erika wrote the book, Just Enough Research , published by A Book Apart . She has a couple published articles in A List Apart .

• Interviewing Humans
• Conversational Design

In this sample chapter from her book, she refers to humans as social creatures and pattern-recognition machines.

Here is a quick overview of the book:

And a more in-depth summary:

Select the Approach

If your question is about users themselves, you’ll be doing user research, or ethnography. If you want to assess an existing or potential design solution, you’ll be doing some sort of evaluative research.

Research Methods

• Contextual Inquiry
• Literature Review

Usability Testing

• A/B Testing
• SWOT Analysis
• Brand Audit
• Competitive Analysis
• Heuristic Analysis

And for the record “user testing” isn’t really a thing because you aren’t testing users, you are testing the usability, or other qualities, of a system. Intentional phrasing matters.

— Erika Hall

Challenging Authority

Designers inhabit the tension between the organizational hierarchy and the creative, collaborative network that is the innovation engine of the organization. Invariably, the authoritarian nature of the typical hierarchy is something that designers must seek to challenge for the sake of well-being of the organization, or the organization risks losing the ability to innovate and will be destined to fail. Erika Hall offered this insight in a conversation with Jared Spool.

That’s what research is. Research is challenging given ideas, so it’s naturally anti-authoritarian. If you’re in an authoritarian business culture, you have to work very carefully to change that.

Understanding Behavior

That's actually one of the criticisms of research is that you're asking people what they want. People will speculate, and this is something you have to be really careful of when you do research about people and their actual behaviors and habits.

If you ask the question the wrong way, what you'll hear is what people are speculating about, which might have no connection to how they actually behave. We humans are terrible, terrible reporters of our own behavior.

That's one of the key research skills is getting through that. Through how people think of themselves, which is usually a little bit more optimistic than how they actually behave.

Collaborative Research

The nice part about working with research is doing this research together makes teams more collaborative. By being collaborative and doing the research, it makes the research more effective. It's this really virtuous cycle, but it doesn't happen on its own. It absolutely does not happen on its own.

Researchers, as humans, will do what's habitual and comfortable for them, which is want to be a specialist, and go off in a corner, and do a rigorous course of study, and write up a report. Then, designers and developers will do what they want to do, which is not read anything and go off and do things that are interesting and feel productive to them.

You have to recognize that changing these behaviors is not insurmountable, but it requires intentional effort on the part of everyone involved. Once you have that, then it's all great, and you get people working together.

Surveys: Misunderstood and Misused

Surveys are the most dangerous research tool — misunderstood and misused. They frequently straddle the qualitative and quantitative, and at their worst represent the worst of both.

Surveys are the most dangerous research tool. An excerpt from my talk about making decisions based on data. https://t.co/vKbAutSpYq #UI20 — Erika Hall (@mulegirl) November 3, 2015

“Not all surveys are bad surveys, but many are.”

“Good research starts with a good research question, one that is specific, actionable, and practical. This means you’re taking cues from what you want to learn, not what kind of research method you chose to use.”

• Erika Hall on Why Surveys (Almost Always) Suck

Focus Groups

There is an interesting debate going on between UX research professionals about the value of focus groups.

Because of Erika Hall’s expertise in the area and her strong views about focus groups, they tend to be avoided as a UX research methodology. Erika argues that focus groups tend to be ineffective because of the effect of group dynamics on the opinions that are offered in a group setting.

Another consideration is the cost, in terms of time and money.

Emma Boulton describes some of the benefits and disadvantages of focus groups.

The greater risk is to design and build a product without doing research. So, the important thing is to decide how much research will be enough to make the right decisions.

Yet focus groups are not research; they’re research theater. They tell us very little about how real people behave in the real world. The brilliant sociologist and father of focus groups Robert K. Merton later lamented their misuse in replacing research: “Even when the subjects are well selected, focus groups are supposed to be merely the source of ideas that need to be researched.”

Empathy for People

UX design is all about understanding the experiences of people who are using a product, engaging in a service, or trying to accomplish a specific task. Research is the first step in gaining empathy for people.

Which brings us to another debate: should we dispense with the term “user”? Is it not dehumanizing? Rather than “user experience”, should we refer to “human experience”?

Attitudes change over time as people are exposed to new ideas. So, curiosity and conversation are essential tools in a designer’s toolkit.

The 9 Rules of Design Research

• Get comfortable being uncomfortable
• Ask first, prototype later
• Know your goal
• Agree on the big questions
• There is always enough time and money
• Don’t expect data to change minds
• Embrace messy imperfection
• Commit to collaboration
• Find your bias buddies

What I like about Erika Hall’s “Just Enough Research” is that it focuses on the real world scenario of a team that has limited time, a limited budget, and limited resources.

• Just Enough Research — Book Summary

If it helps with your analysis, here is a list from pages 53 and 54 of Erika Hall’s Just Enough Research. This list is also cited in her presentation on Collaborative Research .

What is the data?

You are looking for quotes and observations that indicate:

• Goals (what the participant wants to accomplish that your product or service is intended to help them with or otherwise relates to).
• Priorities (what is most important to the participant).
• Tasks (actions the participant takes to meet their goal).
• Motivators (the situation or event that starts the participant down the task path).
• Barriers (the person, situation, or thing that prevents the participant from doing the task or accomplishing the goal).
• Habits (things the participant does on a regular basis).
• Relationships (the people the participant interacts with when doing the tasks).
• Tools (the objects the participant interacts with while fulfilling the goals).
• Environment (what else is present or going on that affects the participant’s desire or ability to do the tasks that help them meet their goals).

Research Insights

A couple Designlab students, Ashley Des Marais and Renee Bruhn , have been working together on a collaborative Phase 2 capstone project.

They used Erika Hall’s list to help define the categories for their affinity map.

You can see how they used the insights they gained from this analysis of their interview results to formulate some conclusions on page 6 of their research findings .

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32 Most Asked MuleSoft Interview Questions & Answers

MuleSoft helps deliver faster and more connected experiences to your customers by offering end-to-end automation and orchestration of all your systems. 

This platform enables integrating applications, devices, and data on both cloud and on-premises. 

Since automation reduces errors and increases efficiency, modern businesses use platforms like Mulesoft to integrate various development and management tools and automate their tasks while eliminating human errors.

In 2006, RossMason from San Francisco invented Mulesoft . According to the Mulesoft website, the platform was created to eliminate the “donkey work” in dealing with development or management tools . 

Although tasks requiring human intervention can be automated through Mulesoft, critical tasks such as making creative decisions still need human intervention. 

So, small enterprises and entrepreneurs find the platform suitable for their business activities. 

This is also why its popularity is increasing, and so are the career opportunities. 

So, if you want to land some lucrative offers from organizations requiring a skilled professional on MuleSoft, this article can help you.

I’ll discuss some important MuleSoft interview questions and answers to give you a better insight into the platform. 

But before that, let’s understand the reason behind MuleSoft’s popularity. 

Why Is MuleSoft So Popular?

In May 2018, Salesforce acquired Mulesoft for $6.5 billion. The acquisition at such a whopping cost indicates the rising popularity of Mulesoft. The platform is popular among business owners and entrepreneurs for many reasons, including:

• Businesses need IT partners, not providers: Hiring IT to support companies has become costly for most businesses. Therefore, budding entrepreneurs and small enterprises want partners instead of IT providers. Mulesoft assists businesses in automating certain tasks efficiently, so businesses do not have to look for IT service providers to deal with those tasks.

• Data-driven business model: Mulesoft helps businesses adopt a data-driven business model, which is essential nowadays for business growth . A data-driven model is crucial for more accurate decision-making. Nevertheless, business owners can make timely decisions to improve their business revenue.
• Security: Every business wants a secured platform, and Mulesoft comes with robust security features. Mulesoft has been around since 2006 and has always ensured top-notch data security for its customers. After being acquired by Salesforce, new security features have been introduced to make Mulesoft more convenient for users.
• Frequent updates and upgrades: Platforms need to be improved and made to adapt to the current user expectations, whether in terms of features or UI and UX, to succeed in the market. Mulesoft is a classic example of this as it keeps on being updated with time. Business owners find Mulesoft integrations convenient and advanced due to their robust, improved, and advanced features.

Some MuleSoft Interview Questions and Answers

Explain mule esb and its basic features..

Answer : The Mule is known as the runtime engine of the Anypoint Platform. Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) is an integral part of Mulesoft. Thus, Mule ESB is an integration platform and a lightweight Java-based program that lets developers easily connect with applications and quickly exchange data. 

Some of its basic features are:

• Mule ESB can transform and map visual data.
• You will get a simple drag-and-drop graphical design.
• It offers enterprise security enforcement abilities. 
• You will find centralized administration and monitoring.

How to improve the performance of the Mule Application?

Answer : Applications that are integrated or hosted on Mulesoft often work flawlessly, as the platform’s automation optimizes the performance of those apps. 

However, a few users may notice sluggish application performance. But you can optimize the application’s performance by taking certain measures.

• Using the flow references over the VM endpoints
• Using the connectors to deploy connection pooling
• Deploying Dataweave for performance transformation
• Staying away from session variables
• Avoiding the session variable’s serialization

What is Flow in Mule?

Answer : A “flow” in Mule refers to a series of components linked together for application integration. The flow starts from an inbound endpoint component, the place of origin for a communication. 

Similarly, the flow ends at the outbound endpoint component to end communication. The flow, consisting of components, is essential for starting and ending communications for the applications integrated with Mulesoft.

Deep dive into SOAP.

Answer : Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) is a message protocol that uses multiple distributed elements of an application for effortless communication. Typically, the users conduct SOAP over many types of standardized protocols. 

For example, it can be conducted over the Hypertext Transfer Protocol. Mulesoft helps application developers create SOAP services. You can initiate a SOAP service over Mulesoft through the following steps:

• When you create a Mule project using RAML, you can create a SOAP service for your application.
• You can also use the web service consumer to consume the SOAP service for your Mule project.

What is the correlation context?

Answer : Correlation context comes into the picture when the mediation primitive needs to pass the value from the request to the response flow. It defines the patterns for similar groups of events in traffic. Also, log servers and NGFW engines use correlation context to analyze the detected events. 

Give a glimpse into the different tools and services offered by Mulesoft.

Answer : Mulesoft offers plenty of valuable tools and services for integrating their applications and data. Some of the important tools and services by MuleSoft are:

• API Designer: Mulesoft offers the API Designer , a web-based tool for JavaScript development that includes a scripting notepad and a console.
• API Manager: Another popular tool, API Manager, offers management services to users. The tool helps manage users, SLAs, and traffic efficiently. 
• Anypoint Studio: Developers can use Anypoint Studio for editing and creating APIs. They can integrate the APIs into their projects according to their specific requirements. 
• API documentation: Developers can refer to comprehensive API documentation, various code samples, and tutorials to understand MuleSoft and its working. 
• API analytics: Mulesoft offers an API analytics tool for tracking API performance. Users can view charts, graphs, and data insights to improve application performance.

Mention various types of variables in Mule.

Answer : There are three types of variables in Mule, namely:

• Flow Variable: It is used to remove variables or set up some variables that are tied to the message in the flow.
• Session Variable: It is also used to remove or set some variables tied to the message for an entire lifecycle across different flows.
• Record Variable: Unlike the other variables, it is the set used inside the batch job. This is available in the process phase.

What are flow processing strategies?

Answer : A flow processing strategy tells how Mule deploys message processing for a given flow. There are six different types of flow processing strategies in Mule:

• Asynchronous Flow Processing Strategy
• Custom Processing Strategy
• Thread per processing strategy
• Queued Asynchronous Flow Processing Strategy
• Synchronous Flow Processing Strategy
• Non-blocking Flow Processing Strategy
• Queued Flow Processing Strategy

Mule chooses a processing strategy based on the flow’s exchange pattern and whether the flow is transactional or not. 

Explain a bit about the Mule transformer.

Answer : A Mule transformer has a simple behavior. It strictly enforces the data types that it receives along with the outputs. A single configuration is enough to get an expected result. Mule has multiple transformers.

Furthermore, a Mule transformer doesn’t report an exception for the bad input but returns the original message without playing with the expected result type. It can alter the message in many ways, such as payload type transformation, payload format transformation, and properties transformation.

How to compose messages in Mule?

Answer : To compose messages in Mule, you need to define: 

• Payload (the main context of data)
• Properties (meta-information or header)
• Multiple name attachments (support multiple part messages), and 
• An exceptional payload (hold errors during the processing of an event).

Explain Mule Data Integrator.

Answer : Data Integrator, also known as a data visualization mapping tool, is launched by Mule. It supports flat files, XML mapping, and Java objects. 

The Mule Data Integrator offers drag-drop features to transform the coding process efficiently. It solves the issues of transforming, consolidating, and moving information from different parts of the enterprise. This allows the Data Integrator to undergo many solutions like standardizing, manipulation, synchronization, deduplication, and cleansing between sources.

What are fan-in and fan-out?

Answer : Fan-in refers to the highest number of input signals that can help in feeding input operations of the logic cell. 

On the other hand, fan-out refers to the highest number of output signals that can help feed the logic cell’s output equations. 

Explain a bit about Mule Expression Language.

Answer : Mule Expression Language (MEL) analyzes and accesses data in a message’s payload properties and variables. It allows smart and rapid filtering, routing, or operating on distinct components of the message object. Moreover, it is practically usable and accessible from each message processor in the Mule. 

Define the transient context.

Answer : Developers use the transient context to pass values through an existing flow. They may request a flow or respond to the flow using this transient context. The transient context makes passing values between mediation primitives on an existing flow easier. 

Typically, developers use transient context to save an input message before dealing with a call invoked by a service. Moreover, the developers can use the next primitives to create another call that includes service-invoked responses.

What is TSD?

Answer : Transport Service Descriptor (TSD) is a connector that developers can use for technical configuration. The TSD defines a class name developers use for requesters, receivers, and dispatchers. The default value may vary depending on the situation and transport behavior.

Explain the scheduler endpoint.

Answer : A scheduler endpoint is a Mule component that works on a time-driven condition. The scheduler endpoint will allow the users to trigger this whenever it meets the time-driven condition. 

The endpoint scheduler comes with some crucial parameters, such as:

• Frequency: The scheduler uses the parameter to trigger flows.
• Time Unit: Developers can use the time unit to measure start delay and frequency.
• Start Delay: The time before triggering a flow is known as the start delay.

Tell a bit about the Scatter-Gather Router.

Answer : The most commonly used routing event processor has been termed a scatter-gather router. The routing event processor can send a request message to more than one target according to the requirements of the developers. The router collects all the responses from different routes and configures them into one response.

What is DataWeave?

Answer : The DataWeave is a powerful and simple tool to transform and query data inside the Mule. You can implement it in graphical map fields or leverage its object-oriented language especially designed to make quick writing transformations without sacrificing maintainability. 

DataWeave supports multiple transformations, such as one-to-one, many-to-one, and one-to-many mappings. In simple words, DataWeave builds products on data by using easy-to-implement available data on the web. 

Explain the statement in MuleSoft – “Any Point Platform”.

Answer : MuleSoft is a highly scalable and secure communication network that ensures applications do self-service. Also, it helps many organizations to integrate data, devices, applications, and more in a flexible ecosystem.

It’s a hybrid application integration platform that offers unified solutions for API management, application design, publishing, and ESB. 

Thus, MuleSoft is known as “Any Point Platform” because of the following features: 

• Anypoint Design Center
• Anypoint Exchange
• Anypoint Management center
• Anypoint Security
• Runtime engine and services
• Application Network
• API-led connectivity

Define Payload.

Answer : Payload is a Mule runtime variable that can store arrays or objects. The applications may have payloads in different forms; thus, the developers use the payload variable to access those payloads present in various forms.

What are SMO and SDO?

Answer : Service Data Object (SDO) represents the variable or object. It is designed to streamline data processing from diverse sources, including web services, relational databases, and XML documents. Application programmers conveniently use SDO with static and dynamic interfaces. 

Service Message Object (SMO) offers an abstraction layer for manipulating and processing message requests between services. It represents the data passing through the mediation flows. The content of SMO can be accessed through the SDO API.

What are the File Age properties in the file connector?

Answer : Any point connector is a tool for handling the folders and files stored on a local file system on the MuleSoft-integrated application. The connector can read files and create a content directory list for the users. 

As a result, the files and folders stay organized for the developers and users. Moreover, you can easily access the required files or folders according to your requirements during the FTP operations for creating directories and moving or deleting files.

What is transport layer functionality?

Answer : Transport layer functions can establish communication between an application and a network. However, sending large messages can make systems sluggish. In such cases, the developers have used the transport layer functions to convert large messages into smaller ones and transport them easily. 

For example, the VM connector on MuleSoft can offer transport layer functionality within an app. This also helps establish a data transportation layer between two different applications on Mule.

What is RAML in Mulesoft?

Answer : RAML is the acronym for Restful API Modeling Language (RAML), built on top of the YAML language used to describe RESTful APIs. 

Mule developers use RAML to describe and define the RESTful applications integrated with MuleSoft. Since it is a standardized language, other developers working on the same project can easily understand the details.

What is MUnit?

Answer : MUnit is the Mule application testing framework that lets developers build automated tests for API integrations. It comes with a full integration suite and unit test capabilities for developers. Furthermore, the suite is fully integrated with Surefire and Maven. 

Some features of MUnit are:

• The MUnit framework allows developers to use Java or Mule code according to their expertise.
• You can test and design your Mule APIs on MUnit.
• MUnit users have access to auto-generated tests and coverage reports.
• Users can extend the MUnit framework using plugins.
• You can get error reports if an error has been encountered with a Mule stack trace.
• MUnit users can also enable/disable tests.

What is CloudHub in MuleSoft?

Answer : CloudHub is an Integrated Platform as a Service (iPaaS) for Mule users. The platform comes with high-end security to protect data from mishandling. It also offers a multi-tenant feature to host public cloud infrastructure for Mule users. 

In addition, developers can access and manage the runtime control planes through MuleSoft. Scalability and automatic updates are some of the other features of CloudHub.

Explain the Platform Cloud Edition.

Answer : Platform Cloud Edition helps you run and manage Mule applications on local servers by following suitable security policies. To avoid interaction with external systems, you will get control plane functionality locally. 

Furthermore, you can easily configure and run Platform Cloud Edition to maintain data processing, transmission, storage, etc. It also uses Kubernetes and Docker to offer built-in scalability and high availability. 

What is Mule Maven Plugin?

Answer : Mule Maven Plugin manages the MuleSoft application’s deployment/undeployment. It is compatible with the Community Mule Kernel and Enterprise Mule Runtime engine. 

With Mule Maven Plugin, you can easily automate the Mule application deployment to Anypoint Runtime Fabric, CloudHub, on-premises, etc. It has three goals:

• Generating a jar file for the project
• Uploading and starting the application automatically in any of the deployment targets
• Deploying the artifact or removing the application from the deployment targets

What is Anypoint MQ?

Answer : Anypoint MQ is a cloud messaging and enterprise multi-tenant service that comes as a part of the Anypoint platform. Developers need Anypoint MQ for dealing with asynchronous messaging. 

For example, you need the service to queue up fully hosted and managed cloud exchanges and messages.

What are dedicated load balancers?

Answer : The dedicated load balancers are the optimal components of the Anypoint Platform. It enables you to route external traffic to different Mule applications deployed to the CloudHub workers in a Virtual Private Cloud (VPC). 

Explain the differences between ESB and JMS.

Answer : The Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) offers middleware and an interface that helps businesses connect various applications without knowing how to code. 

On the other hand, Java Messaging Service (JMS) enables communication through messaging between multiple applications or modules.

What is Filter in Mule?

Answer : The filter typically works over an array to apply expressions that will return matching values. This means it determines whether a message will proceed using application flow based on test or condition. 

MuleSoft has become immensely popular among entrepreneurs and small-scale businesses. Therefore, becoming an expert in Mulesoft can give you a brilliant career. 

Thus, consider the above questions and their answers if preparing for a MuleSoft interview. Learning about them will help you understand the platform and ace your interview for lucrative land opportunities. 

You may look at some of the  best tools to build APIs .

Download Interview guide PDF

Mulesoft interview questions, download pdf, what is mulesoft.

MuleSoft is an integration platform that helps to connect devices, applications, and data. Integrating data to deliver a single view of the customer, automating business processes, and building connected experiences are done through Mulesoft. Mulesoft’s platform, which is called Anypoint Platform, comprises a number of tools for developing, managing, and testing application programming interfaces (APIs), which support such connections. MuleSoft’s Anypoint Platform is the world’s leading integration platform for Service-oriented architecture (SOA) and Software as a Service (SaaS) as well.

Origin: MuleSoft was founded by Ross Mason in 2006, based in San Francisco. As stated on the company's website, the name MuleSoft comes from the ability of this platform to eliminate the "donkey work." The company chose this name to reflect its platform's hybrid capabilities, also because mules are a hybrid combination of donkeys and horses. 

Mulesoft filed for its initial public offering (IPO) in 2017. In May 2018, Mulesoft was acquired by Salesforce , which is a software as a service (SaaS) provider. MuleSoft technology is now a part of the Salesforce Integration Cloud.

Mulesoft Interview Questions for Freshers

1. what are connectors in mule.

Connectors in Mule are Mule’s abstraction for sending and receiving data and interacting with various APIs. There are generally 2 forms of connectors in Mule: 

• Transport: This is the most common form of connector used in Mule. Like HTTP, transports provide an adaptation layer for a protocol. These are the sources and sinks for data - to get data into and out of flows.
• Cloud connectors: These are typically used to interact with an API. Usually, cloud connectors don’t give endpoints. Instead, they have message processors that map to the operations provided in the API. The operations of an API are combined by these cloud connectors. The effect of this is that the initial friction for a developer is greatly reduced.

2. What are the different tools and services offered by Mulesoft?

MuleSoft helps in the task of data integration diligently and efficiently. The tools and services offered by MuleSoft include:

• API Designer: API Designer is a web-based tool that contains a console and a scripting notebook for JavaScript.
• API Manager: API Manager is a management tool that allows organizations in managing users, traffic, and service level agreements.
• Anypoint Studio: Anypoint Studio is a graphical design environment to build and edit APIs and integrations.
• API Portal: This is a portal that offers developers different kinds of documents, tutorials, and code snippets related to APIs.
• API Analytics: API Analytics is an analytics tool that allows a user to track the specifications of an API. This also includes its performance, usage, and reliability. Additionally, it offers a dashboard and charts.

3. What is Mule ESB?

Mule ESB stands for Mule Enterprise Service Bus . Mule ESB makes it easy for the development teams to flexibly connect, access, and exchange data easily. This means that even though the application is running into different VMs, the interactions between them are easy. 

Following are some of the features of Mule ESB:

• Message Transformation Service
• Set of Service Container
• Web Service Security
• Message Routing Service
• Simple drag-and-drop graphical design
• Centralized monitoring and administration

4. What are Batch Jobs in Mule ESB?

In Mule ESB, a batch job is an element in a mule that splits large messages into records. These records are then processed asynchronously in a batch job.

Within an application, one can initiate a Batch Job scope, which splits messages into individual records, performs actions upon each record, and then reports on the results and potentially pushes the processed output to other systems or queues. With this, we can handle large quantities of incoming data from an API into a legacy system. We can also synchronize data sets between business applications.

5. What are the different types of variables in MuleSoft?

The different types of variables in MuleSoft are as follows: 

• Flow Variable: This is used to either set or remove variables that are tied to a particular message in the current flow. Syntax: #[flowVars.Code]
• Record Variable: This is used for the batch processing flows. Unlike any other variable, these are special variable sets that are used only inside a Batch Job. Syntax: #[recordVars.Code]
• Session Variable: This is used to either set or remove variables tied to a particular message for the entire lifecycle.  Syntax: #[sessionVars.Code]

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6. what are the different types of messages in mulesoft.

• Echo and Log message - These are used to log messages and move them from inbound to outbound routers. Inbound Routers means a single event is received via an endpoint and the router controls how and if this event gets routed into the system. Outbound routers mean once a message has been processed by a component an outbound router can be used to determine which components get the result event.
• Bridge Message - This is a passed message from inbound to outbound routers.
• Build Message - These are messages created from fixed or dynamic values.

7. What are the different Primitives used in Mediation?

Mediation is used for personalizing interactions between distributed applications and service components. The following are the different Primitives used in Mediation:

• Message Filter
• Type Filter
• Endpoint Lookup
• Service Invoke
• Message Element Setter
• Data Handler
• Custom Mediation
• Header Setters
• Message Logger
• Even Emitter

8. What is a shared resource in Mule?

In Mule, shared resources are common resources that are exposed to all applications deployed under the same domain. Sharing resources allows different development teams to work in parallel. 

For instance : Connector configurations could be made a reusable resource. These could be shared among all applications deployed.

These shared resources should be defined in the Mule Domain Project. These should then be referred to each of the projects that are meant to use the elements in it. 

9. What are the Models?

In Mulesoft studio, the grouping of services (application objects and their attributes) created are called Models. Through this, a user can start and stop the services inside a given model.

10. What is Mule?

Mule is an open-source enterprise integration platform that helps tackle the problems in developing integration applications. Some of the problems that are tackled by Mule include Error handling, Monitoring, Lifecycle and management, Data format, etc. Thus, with these problems gone, Mule helps focus on the application’s core requirements like scalability and efficiency.

11. What is a runtime manager in Mule?

In Mule, a runtime manager is used for deploying and managing Mule applications. This is done on the Mule runtime engine where Mule runtime is running. We can deploy or pause the mule application by using runtime manager. We can also change the runtime version of the application at a given time. The worker size can be increased or decreased as well.

12. What is Worker in MuleSoft?

In Mulesoft, Worker is a dedicated instance of Mule hosted on AWS that is used to run the integration applications.

Following are some of the features of workers:

• Capacity: For the purpose of data processing, every worker has a given amount of capacity.
• Isolation: Isolation means that every worker runs in a separate container from every other application.
• Manageability: Manageability means that the deployment and management of each worker are done independently.
• Locality: In this feature, every worker runs and is located on a specific worker cloud. 

13. What is Mule Runtime?

A runtime engine that is used to host and run Mule applications, is called a Mule runtime. This is similar to an application server. Mule runtimes can be provisioned either on the premises or also on the cloud. A single Mule runtime can host several Mule applications. Here is the figure representing Mule runtime. 

14. How is Reliability achieved in MuleSoft?

Reliability in Mule means Zero message loss. To make this happen, applications must be designed in a way to capture the state of a running process/instance, which can be picked up by another running node in the cluster. Reliable messaging is given by built-in support of transactions in transport, if the application uses a transactional transport such as Java Message Service (JMS), Virtual Machine (VM), Database (DB), etc. A reliable messaging pattern is essential when dealing with non-transactional endpoints.

15. How can we improve the performance of the Mule Application in MuleSoft?

The following are some ways to improve the performance of the Mule Application in MuleSoft:

• Put the data validation at the start of the flow.
• Use Streaming to process data.
• Save the results of the application and reuse them later.
• Process data asynchronously wherever is possible.

16. How can Code in MuleSoft be optimized for memory efficiency?

The code in MuleSoft be optimized for memory efficiency in the following ways:

• One should not save the payload into the flow variable. This is because it is a more memory consuming element.
• The unnecessary part of the document should not be loaded while processing.
• For highly concurrent scenarios, one should use better database polling.
• Use Dataweave for transformations.

17. What are Flow Processing Strategies and what are the different types of it?

How Mule implements message processing for a given flow is determined by a Flow Processing Strategy. All Mule flows have an implicit processing strategy which Mule applies automatically: either synchronous or queued-asynchronous. Each of these processing strategies is optimal for certain flows. 

The different types of Flow Processing Strategies are:

• Synchronous Flow Processing Strategy.
• Asynchronous Flow Processing Strategy.
• Queued Flow Processing Strategy.
• Queued Asynchronous Flow Processing Strategy.
• Custom Processing Strategy.
• Thread Per Processing Strategy.
• Non-blocking Flow Processing Strategy.

Mulesoft Interview Questions for Experienced

1. what is the mule data integrator.

Data Integrator is a data visualization mapping tool launched by Mule. It has support for Java objects, flat files, and XML Mapping.

The Mule Data Integrator tool provides drag and drop features to make the coding process easier, as it could be a challenging task for a developer to code complex mapping functionalities. This process of mapping gets support from eclipse to run the Data Integrator, which is part of the top layer applications in Mule Architecture. Data integration solves the problem of moving, transforming, and consolidating information from various parts of the enterprise. This enables it to undergo cleansing, standardizing, de-duplication, manipulation, and synchronization between sources.

2. What is Subflow in mule?

Using the flow-reference element of Mule, we can call a subflow. When the sublow is called using a flow-reference element by the main flow, the entire message structure (attachments, payload, properties, etc.) is passed along with the context (transactions, session, etc.) Similarly, the entire message along with the context is returned to the main calling flow after the processing of the message is done in the subflow. 

Following are some features of Subflow:

• Subflows are very useful when you want to add re-usable logic, as you can call sub-flows multiple times.
• Referring subflows gives better performance than referring a flow.
• Subflows don’t have event sources. 

3. What is the difference between Flow and Subflow in mule?

4. What is a Mule transformer?

A Mule transformer is used to strictly enforce the types of data it receives and its outputs. One configuration can be used to relax this - An exception won’t be reported for bad input, but the original message will be returned without enforcing the expected result type by the transformer. Thus, this option should be used sparingly. A depiction of a Mule transformer is shown in the flowchart below. Mule has multiple transformers and each project you do might potentially have one transformer. 

There are different ways in which a transformer can alter a message:

• Payload type transformation - In this, the message payload data type is transformed from one binary form to another. As an example, a java.util.Map can be transformed into a javax.jms.MapMessage.
• Payload format transformation - In this, the message payload data format is transformed from one form to another. As an example, a byte array that has an XML document instance is transformed into a byte array that has a plain-text instance for logging.
• Properties transformation - In this, the properties of the message are changed. This could be done by either adding, modifying or removing existing properties. As an example, a message that requires a given property to be set prior to being sent to a JMS destination.

Usually, transformers come in pairs. In these pairs, the second transformer cannot perform what the first one performs. 

As an example, the payload format transformations such as compression and decompression, are handled by 2 different transformers. One of these transformers is able to reverse the action of the other one. This is what is called a round-trip transformer. The original message should be restituted by making a message go through a transformer and its round-trip. 

5. What are some of the advantages of Mulesoft?

Mulesoft as an integration platform offers many advantages. Following are some of them:

• It is lightweight yet highly scalable. With Mulesoft, we can connect a large number of applications. For the communication to stay uninterrupted and consistent between the applications, ESB helps. Even though the protocols used for Virtual Machine are the same, building and maintaining communication between applications is allowed.
• Mulesoft can combine and connect over a large range of application network
• It has integration support for connecting various parts of the network.
• The components within the application are reusable. We can use pre-existing parts without having to write specific codes.
• As this is a vendor-neutral solution, many vendors can be integrated. Also, by minimizing the restrictions on vendors, the vendor dependencies are removed.
• For higher business support, it has great adaptability to change.

6. What are the available resources used for modularizing configuration in Mule?

The resources used for modularizing configuration in Mule are as follows:

• Independent Configuration: To load a number of independent configuration files one after the other, a mule instance is used.
• Inherited Configuration: One Configuration inherits a Configuration from another different configuration. This is like the name ‘inheritance’ suggests - a parent-child relationship between the 2 configurations. This ensures that no configuration file will be omitted booting of the application takes place. This is the guarantee that this dependency provides.

The following is an example: 

• Imported Configuration: This also supports spring configuration. This enables us to easily use the spring config file to Mule configuration files. If we need to extend instance.xml then the spring context file will be imported:
• Heterogeneous configuration: In this type of configuration, we can utilize many types of files as the term ‘heterogeneous’ signifies. By using the Groovy script method and Spring XML Configuration builders, we can create the instances.

7. How are the messages in Mule composed?

There are four different parts of the composed message in Mule. These are as follows:

• Payload - This is the main context of data carried by a given message.
• Properties - Similar to the SOAP message, this contains meta-information or header
• Multiple Name Attachments - This is used to provide support for multi-part messages.
• An exceptional payload - to hold errors that occur during the processing of the event.

8. What are the configuration patterns provided by MuleSoft?

Configuration patterns have been designed for ease of use. The four configuration patterns that exist today make things that people do all the time simple, understandable, and fast to create.

Mulesoft provides the following configuration patterns:

• Simple service pattern

9. What is the use of Filter in Mule?

To make smart decisions on the request and response environment or message delivery, filters are used. These are the most powerful capabilities given to the routers.

In order to decide what to do with the messages in the transit stage, filters give sight to the router. Some filters go through a thorough analysis of the given message to obtain the actual value of the desired output. 

The expression ‘filter’ returns either true or false. If the expression returns true for a value or index in the array, the value gets captured in the output array. If it returns false for a value or index in the array, that item gets filtered out of the output. If there are no matches, the output array will be empty.

10. What do you mean by Flow in Mule?

‘Flow’ is when we combine together multiple individual processors in order to handle a receipt, its processing and eventual routing of a message. We can connect several flows together to build one whole application. This application can then be deployed on Mule, on-premise, or another app server, or also on the cloud.

Simply put, the sequences of the message processors are called flows. A message entering a flow can pass through a large variety of processors. In the figure shown below, after receiving the message through a request-response inbound endpoint, Mule then transforms the content into a new format. The business logic is then processed in a component before returning a response through the message source.

11. What do you mean by SOAP and what are some of the advantages of it?

SOAP stands for Simple Object Access Protocol. It is used to exchange structured information in the implementation of web services in computer networks. The following are the advantages of SOAP:

• For a web service to talk with the client applications, SOAP is one of the best mediums that is developed
• It is a light-weight protocol. This allows applications to pass messages and data back and forth between disparate systems easily.
• It can be used for the interchange of data between various applications.
• The SOAP protocol can work with any programming language-based applications on Windows and Linux platforms.
• Web services built on the SOAP protocol do not require customization to work on the World Wide Web (WWW).

12. What are the parameters to configure a scheduler?

The Scheduler component in Mule helps us to trigger a flow when a time-based condition is met. 

The parameters related to configuring a scheduler are as follows:

• Frequency: The Scheduler uses frequency to trigger flows.
• Start Delay: This signifies the time to wait before triggering a flow.
• Time Unit: This is the time unit for frequency and for Start Delay.

For example in some use cases where you need to do a specific task at a particular period of time or repeatedly at a fixed interval, your integration flow can be scheduled via Scheduler.

13. What do you mean by Correlation Context?

Correlation Context is when the mediation primitive needs to pass the value from the request flow to the response flow. Here, the correlation context plays the role of passing the value. 

Connected experiences are at the core of Mulesoft applications. Integrating data to deliver a single view of the customer, automating business processes, and building connected experiences are all made easy through Mulesoft. Each unified part becomes a building block that is reusable through using this modern approach which is API-led. The results of these are agility and scale.

References and Resources

• Mule in Action, Second Edition (O’Reilly) - By John D'Emic, David Dossot, John D'Emic, and Victor Romero
• Hands-On Microservices - Monitoring and Testing (Packt Publishing) - By Dinesh Rajput
• API Recipes with Mulesoft(r) Anypoint Platform - by Whishworks
• Salesforce Lightning Interview Questions
• Technical Interview Questions

Frequently Asked Questions

1. is mulesoft hard to learn.

Mule supports multiple scripts. If one has a basic understanding of OOPS, Java, Python, Ruby, or Groovy, then one can learn Mule ESB. There are multiple resources online to help you learn these.

2. Why is MuleSoft famous?

Mulesoft makes it easy to build connected experiences and unifies data to present a single view to the customer. Each integration done this way can also become a building block that is reusable. By using Mulesoft, time for development is saved. Also, the production environments become easier to use. 

3. Is MuleSoft a good career?

The demand for a career in Mulesoft is steadily growing. Anypoint by Mulesoft, being a top integration platform has become the choice for a number of developers for their careers.

4. Does MuleSoft require coding?

In Mule applications, DataWeave is a functional language used to perform data transformations. For this purpose, coding is required. However, the requirement for coding is not much in this case. 

Mulesoft MCQ Questions

What are various types of Exception Handling in context to Mule?

Which of the following are features of Mule ESB?

Which of the following are endpoints in Mule Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)?

Which of the following are types of variables in Mule?

What are some of the error types in MuleSoft?

Which of the following connectors is used in distributed file polling?

MuleSoft supports which of the following types of transactions?

Which of the following are the types of messages in MuleSoft?

Which of the following are ways to implement caching in MuleSoft?

Which of the following are features of workers in Mulesoft?

Which of the following are principles of ESB Integration?

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