Top 50 Adobe Cq5 Interview Questions You Must Prepare 23.Jan.2025

• JCR – Java specification for accessing a content repository, CQ5 uses its own implementation of JCR called CRX. Apache Jackrabbit is an open-source implementation of JCR 2.0 specification.
• Apache Sling – RESTful framework to access a JCR over http protocol. It maps the request url to the node in JCR.
• OSGi – framework for modular application development using java. Each module called bundle can be independently started and stopped.

A content repository is a storage unit with an associated search and access methods allowing application-independent access to the content, the ability to store and modify content in addition to searching and retrieving. A content repository thus typically forms the technical underpinning of a content application, like a Content Management System or a Document Management System. It functions as the logical storage facility for content.

Adobe Communique 5, or CQ5, is a java based large-scale web content management system. It combines web content management, digital asset management, and social collaboration to deliver a solution that allows to manage incredible amounts of information, multiple internal and external websites, a myriad of media assets, and detailed workflow.

• CQ5 is set of content management services built on a content-centric Web application framework on top of a Java Content Repository.
• The product has been completely redesigned from Communiqué 4, allowing Adobe to use new architecture and technologies.
• The Graphical User Interface has been completely re-engineered using AJAX and the latest browser technologies. This leads to an unparalleled user experience.

CQ5 CRX is pre-loaded to run within a cluster,even when running a single instance. Hence the configuration of multi-node clusters with little effort happens in CQ5.

Components:
• are modular units which realize specific functionality to present your content on your website.
• are re-usable.
• are developed as self-contained units within one folder of the repository.
• have no hidden configuration files.
• can contain other components.
• run anywhere within any CQ system.
• have a standardized user interface.
• use widgets.

It is a list of other client library categories on which this library folder depends. For example, given two cq:ClientLibraryFolder nodes F and G, if a file in F requires another file in G in order to function properly, then at least one of the categories of G should be among the dependencies of F.

Scripts cannot be called directly within Sling since it will break the strict concept of a REST server; you would mix resources and representations.

If you call the representation (the script) directly you hide the resource inside your script, so the framework (Sling) no longer knows about it.

1. OSGi bundles are jar files with metadata inside. Much of this metadata is in the jar’s manifest, found at META-INF/MANIFEST.MF. This metadata, when read by an OSGi runtime container, is what gives the bundle its power.
2. With OSGi, just because a class is public doesn’t mean you can get to it. All bundles include an export list of package names, and if a package isn’t in the export list, it doesn’t exist to the outside world. This allows developers to build an extensive internal class hierarchy and minimize the surface area of the bundle’s API without abusing the notion of package-private visibility. A common pattern, for instance, is to put interfaces in one package and implementations in another, and only export the interface package.
3. All OSGi bundles are given a version number, so it’s possible for an application to simultaneously access different versions of the same bundle (eg: junit 3.8.1 and junit 4.0.). Since each bundle has it’s own classloader, both bundles classes can coexist in the same JVM.
4. OSGi bundles declare which other bundles they depend upon. This allows them to ensure that any dependencies are met before the bundle is resolved. Only resolved bundles can be activated. Because bundles have versions, versioning can be included in the dependency specification, so one bundle can depend on version junit version 3.8.1 and another bundle depend on junit version 4.@
5. In OSGi bundle, there will be an Activator.java class in OSGi which is an optional listener class to be notified of bundle start and stop events.

CQ5 is perfect for large content-driven sites.

• Flexibility:
  • Even non-technical users can update the content.
  • Duplicating the site will be very easy to create a mobile friendly version.
  • Excellent at managing multiple touch-points.
  • It is very easy to deploy and scale up or down.

• Time management:
  • Very less amount of time to develop.
  • Relies on real open standards which are not de facto standards.
  • Best integration with third party systems.
  • Content reusability.
  • Adobe CQ5 provides automation, a very intuitive interface and great performance

• The Servlet Engine acts as the server within which each CQ (and CRX if used) instance runs as a web application.
• Any Servlet Engine supporting the Servlet API 2.4 (or higher) can be used.
• Although you can run CQ WCM without an application server, a Servlet Engine is needed.

• Dynamic module system for Java.
• Universal Middleware Category.
• Helps applications to be constructed from small, reusable and collaborative components.
• OSGi bundles can contain compiled Java code, scripts, or any contents to be loaded in the repository.
• Helps the bundles to be loaded, installed.

“org.apache.sling.api.SlingHttpServletResponse” interface extends the ”javax.servet.http.HttpServletResponse” interface and is currently empty.

It merely exists for symmetry with the SlingHttpServletRequest.

Authentication is the process of identifying, and verifying, a user. The process of authentication and login can be broken down as follows:

1. Authentication information is extracted from the request. In CQ this is done by an authentication handler.
2. The authentication information is then checked to determine whether it is sufficient and/or correct. In CQ this is performed by the login modules.
3. The appropriate response is initiated.

For CQ, initial authentication uses a standard HTML-login form in conjunction with the Authorization Header Authentication Handler. The HTML-form must have fields for the user name and password (the same field names must then be used by the Authorization Header Authentication Handler).

You can also use a similar form for controlled access to various areas of your website. For example, CQ can interact with a LDAP server that stores user information centrally, eliminating the need for duplication. This central server is then used to verify login information which enables you to realize Single Sign On, both with other in-house applications and external Portals.

In order to utilize helpful Sling functions, Sling Tag library must be declared. When you use the Sling Tag Library in your script, the script must start with the following code:

<%@ taglib prefix="sling" uri="http://sling.apache.org/taglibs/sling/1.0" %>

• The CQ WCM is the first screen you will see after logging in.
• The left panel of the WCM represents the site hierarchy. Here, you will find a tree structure of the pages and other content that can be expanded or collapsed.
• This structure is generated as you nest content pages. This is also how URLs are generated.
• Once you click on a page from the site hierarchy that contains child pages(i.e., pages nested underneath), the child pages will appear on the WCM right panel.
• You can tell that a page has child pages by the presence of a plus (+) or minus (-) sign beside its icon. In the right panel, you may select one or multiple pages on which you would like to perform actions, including moving, deleting, copying, activating or deactivating.
• A double-click on the page name expands the tree and opens the page at the same time

Following are the life cycle states of OSGI:

• Installed: The bundle has been successfully installed.
• Resolved: All Java classes that the bundle needs are available. This state indicates that the bundle is either ready to be started or has stopped.
• Starting: The bundle is being started, the BundleActivator.start method will be called, and this method has not yet returned. When the bundle has an activation policy, the bundle will remain in the STARTING state until the bundle is activated according to its activation policy.
• Active: The bundle has been successfully activated and is running; its Bundle Activator start method has been called and returned.
• Stopping: The bundle is being stopped. The BundleActivator.stop method has been called but the stop method has not yet returned.
• Uninstalled: The bundle has been uninstalled. It cannot move into another state.

Multi Site Manager (MSM) enables you to easily manage multiple web sites that share common content. MSM lets you define relations between the sites so that content changes in one site are automatically replicated in other sites.

For example, web sites are often provided in multiple languages for international audiences. When the number of sites in the same language is low (three to five), a manual process for synchronizing content across sites is possible. However, as soon as the number of sites grows or when multiple languages are involved, it becomes more efficient to automate the process.

In CQ5 Dispatcher helps to cache and load-balance. The main responsibilities are,

1. Caching – Cache as much content as possible[ It helps to reduce the continuous functioning of layout engine frequently for generating content when in dynamic.]
2. Load-balancing – To increase the performance by load-balancing.

Dispatcher is CQ5 caching and/or load balancing tool. Dispatcher also helps to protect your AEM server from attack. It cache responses from publish instance, to increase the responsiveness and security of your externally facing published website

This is managed by the Sling Management Console of CQ5.

It is a workflow component which can be found at:

“/libs/cq/workflow/components/model/process”, this is used for calling a java class in workflow.

parbase: The parbase allows components to inherit attributes from other components, similar to subclasses in object oriented languages such as Java, C++, and so on. For example, when you open the /libs/foundation/components/text node in the CRX Explorer, you see that it has a property named sling:resourceSuperType, which references the parbase component. The parbase here defines tree scripts to render images, titles, and so on, so that all components sub classed from this parbase can use this script.

parasys (Paragraph System): The paragraph system (parsys) is a compound component that allows authors to add components of different types to a page and contains all other paragraph components. Each paragraph type is represented as a component. The paragraph system itself is also a component, which contains the other paragraph components.

For inheriting properties we have to create two components with unique names in the base component dialog. For eg. If your plan is to have two rich text two rich text areas in the dialog of components that inherit from the base, then you must include two rich text areas with unique names in the base component dialog. In any case every input field of a dialog must have a unique name, else they will point to the same property path relative to the jcr:content node of the component when used on a page.

1. Dispatcher invalidates those pages whose content has been updated and replaces it with new content.
2. Auto-Inavidation automatically removes the contents which are not relevant.

CQ encompasses several applications that are designed to interact and complement each other. In particular, the Workflow Engine can be used in tight conjunction with several of the other applications. 

Workflows are at the center of how form submissions in CQ WCM are typically processed. When creating a new form, the form submission can be easily associated with a workflow model, for example to store the content in a particular location of the repository or to notify a user about the form submission and its content.

Steps involved in replication:

1. The author requests that certain content be published (activated); this can be initiated by a manual request, or by automatic triggers which have been preconfigured.
2. The request is passed to the appropriate default replication agent; an environment can have several default agents which will always be selected for such actions.
3. The replication agent “packages” the content and places it in the replication queue.
4. The content is lifted from the queue and trported to the publish environment using the configured protocol; usually this is HTTP.
5. A servlet in the publish environment receives the request and publishes the received content; the default servlet is http://localhost:4503/bin/receive.

Live Copy – Copy created from existing site or blue print is called Live Copy. Rollout configurations for this Live Copy can be configured from tools console.

Language Copy – Site which is created using language tool is called Language copy. Basically to create a site for different language.

An author in CQ generates the material which will, at some point, be published to your website. Depending on how your instance and your personal access rights are configured you can perform many tasks, including amongst others

• generate new content, 
• Edit existing content,
• create new pages using predefined templates,
• move, copy or delete pages,
• Activate (or deactivate) pages,
• Participate in workflows that control how changes are managed.

When authoring a mobile page, the page is displayed in a way that emulates the mobile device, called an emulator. When authoring the page, you can switch between several emulators to get a real view of what the end-user will see when accessing the page.

Apache Sling is a web application framework for content-centric applications, using a Java Content Repository, such as Apache Jackrabbit or CRX, to store and manage content.

Sling:

•  is based on REST principles to provide easy development of content-oriented applications.
•  is embedded within CQ@
•  is used to process HTTP rendering and data-storage requests which assemble, render and send the content to a client (i.e. the new  delivery).
•  maps Content objects to Components (which render them and process incoming data).
•  comes with both server-side and AJAX scripting support.
•  can be used with a range of scripting languages, including JSP, ESP and Ruby.
•  started as an internal project of Day Management AG.
•  has been contributed to the Apache Software Foundation.

Package: A Package is a zip file that contains the content in the form of a file-system serialization (called “vault” serialization) that displays th content from the repository as an easy-to-use-and-edit representation of files and folders. Packages can include content and project-related data.

Bundle: Bundle is a tightly coupled, dynamically loadable collection of classes, jars, and configuration files that explicitly declare their external dependencies (if any).

Versions of CQ before 5.5 were based on a servlet container (CQSE, by default, though others could be used) running with multiple webapps: One for the CRX content repository and one for the OSGi container which itself contained Sling and AEM. The Sling webapp was bound to the root and handled most of the request processing.

With CQ 5.5 and AEM, the OSGi container is positioned at the root and the OSGi HTTP service, backed by Sling acting as the sole request handling end point. The CRX content repository is now just another OSGi service, alongside the various services that comprise the rest of the AEM unctionality. These changes do not affect applications built on top of AEM or Sling.

The new architecture me that the quickstart jar installation of AEM can no longer support other web applications running alongside AEM. However, the war version of AEM is designed to be deployed in an application server, where additional web applications can be deployed alongside it.

Added three new connectors to key adobe products – Creative Suite, Scene7, Search&Promote Authors can directly work on mobile apps. Partnered with hybris software to add some nice eCommerce capabilities. Added Undo(Ctrl+z) and Redo(Ctrl+y) functionalities.

• parsys – It is called “Paragraph System” component in which you can add other components at page level.
• iparsys – It is inherited paragraph system, which inherits parent page “paragraph system”.

It is used for adding site specific js and css files to the page and also thridparty js and css files.

A Java Content Repository uses the JSR-170 API to access the content repository using Java, independent of the physical implementation. JCR is the Java Content Repository standard, also known as JSR-170 after its Java Specification Request. Later revised version 2 as (JCR-283). A repository effectively consists of two parts:

1.  A Web application that offers the JSR-170 compliant API and temporary data storage (in the form of the session).
2.  A Persistence Manager with persistent data storage, such as the file system or a database.

• Both dialog and design dialog defines the UI interface for allowing the user to configure the component.
• Design Dialog of a component can be seen/edited in design mode of the page. Design dialog is at template level so all the page of the template will share same design dialog and it is stored under /etc/designs folder.
• Where as Dialog of a component is at page level so each component instance will have its own dialog and information entered in dialog will be stored under /content folder.

REST stands for Representational State Trfer. REST-style architectures consist of clients and servers. Clients initiate requests to servers; servers process requests and return appropriate responses. Requests and responses are built around the trfer of representations of resources. A resource can be essentially any coherent and meaningful concept that may be addressed. A representation of a resource is typically a document that captures the current or intended state of a resource.Apache Sling is RESTful framework to access a java content repository over http protocol.

In computing, a cluster is a group of computers linked together to work, in some respects, as a single computer. Every Cq5 CRX instance comes pre-configured to run within a cluster,even when running a singular instance. This design feature allows the configuration of multi-node clusters with little effort.

A template is the basis of a page. A template is used to create a page and defines which components can be used within the selected scope. A template is a hierarchy of nodes that has the same structure as the page to be created, but without any actual content.

Each template are built up of components available for use.

To create a page, the content of the template must be copied (/apps /[application] /templates /[template-name]) to appropriate position in the site tree. This is one of the main and interesting features of CQ5.

•  Are the highly polished user interface elements that work across all the most important browsers and allow the creation of desktop-grade UI experiences. 
• These widgets are included within CQ and, in addition to being used by CQ itself, can be used by any website built using CQ.

“org.apache.sling.api.SlingHttpServletRequest” interface defines the basic data available from the client request to both action processing and response rendering. The SlingHttpServletRequest extends the javax.servlet.http.HTTPServletRequest.

• Building websites through a rich graphical interface, corporate design and user access control of editing and publishing rights.
• Implementation of workflows for creating, editing and publishing of content.
•  Managing a repository of digital assets like images, documents and integrating them to the websites.
• Usage of search queries to find content no matter where it is stored in your organization.
• Setting up easily the social collaboration blogs, groups.
• Tagging utility to organize the digital assets such as images.

• Aplications are portable, easier to re-engineer, and adaptable to changing requirements.
• It supports administration of application bundle dependencies and versions, simplifying and standardizing third-party library integration.
• The framework provides isolation for enterprise applications that are composed of multiple, versioned bundles with dynamic life cycles.
• OSGi applications can access external bundle repositories. The framework reinforces service-oriented design at the module level.

1. Cache as much content as possible as static pages.
2. Accessing layout engine as little as possible.

OSGi stands for "Open Systems Gateway initiative"

• “is the dynamic module system for Java™.”
• comes under the classification Universal Middleware.
• “provides the standardized primitives that allow applications to be constructed from small, reusable and collaborative components. These components can be composed into an application and deployed.”
• OSGi bundles can contain compiled Java code, scripts, content that is to be loaded in the repository, and configuration or additional files, as needed.
• allows the bundles to be loaded, and installed, during normal operations. In the case of CQ5, this is managed by the Sling Management Console.

Rule #1: Data First, Structure Later. Maybe.
Rule #2: Drive the content hierarchy, do not let it happen.
Rule #3: Workspaces are for clone(), merge() and update().
Rule #4: Beware of Same Name Siblings.
Rule #5: References considered harmful.
Rule #6: Files are Files are Files.
Rule #7: IDs are evil.

• Step 1 – Copy /libs/foundation/components/page/dialog node to template component’s node.
• Step 2 – Modify dialog node 

The persistence manager saves the repository content to a permanent storage solution, such as the file system or a database. By default, CRX saves repository content to the Tar persistence manager. Following DB’s can be used for storing content – DB2, Oracle, SQL Server, MySQL.

The DAM is where authors can upload files (other than HTML) for publishing on their websites. Examples include images and PDF documents. The interface is similar to the WCM.

DAM Left Panel : The folder structure is on the left panel, and can be expanded or collapsed by clicking the appropriate plus (+) or minus (-) symbols. For your first time using the DAM, you will need to navigate to your department’s Digital Assets through the tree, beginning with SFU. Contact your Site Administrator if you cannot see your department’s Digital Assets space. You can only see those that you have been authorized to.

DAM right Panel : The right panel will display the folders and their contents, including thumbnails of images. A double-click on the image will display a larger version and details such as its size, description, tags, and dimensions.

While determining the folder structure of the contents within the DAM is entirely to the authors’ discretion, keeping it similar to the site structure in the WCM is suggested. This will offer a visual reference between the relationship of the files in the DAM and the pages in the WCM. All files must be uploaded to the DAM before they can be used; the system cannot access online files. Each must be activated (the same way as activating a content page), otherwise it will not appear on the published page, and it will only be in the authorrsquo;s editing window.

You can always limit who can access certain folders in CQ Digital Assets by making the folder part of a CUG(closed user group). Steps to make a folder part of a CUG:

• In CQ DAM, right-click the folder you want to add closed user group properties for and select Properties.
• Click the CUG tab.
• Select the Enabled check box to make the folder and its assets available only to a closed user group.
• Browse to the login page, if there is one, to add that information. Add admitted groups by clicking Add item. If necessary, add the realm. Click OK to save your changes.

• CQ is an online content management system. This me that authors do not need to install special software in order to use CQ; only a browser is needed.
• In CQ, authors create, modify and delete content on an authoring environment.
• Basic authoring activities in CQ such as adding text, images, and basic layouts, do not require the knowledge of HTML.
• Changes to content in CQ are not made visible to the public until authors activate them (i.e., publish the content). Authors can also deactivate (i.e., unpublish) content if necessary