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OS, DBMS and CN: A Quick Revision for Interviews

Team prephasz· 15 Jul 2026· 1 min read

The core-CS concepts interviewers keep returning to — deadlocks, normalisation, indexing, the TCP handshake — distilled into a one-sitting revision.

Technical interviews lean on three subjects again and again: operating systems, databases, and computer networks. You do not need everything — you need the concepts that get asked.

Operating systems

  • Process vs thread, and why threads share memory.
  • Deadlock — the four Coffman conditions and how to break one.
  • Scheduling — FCFS, SJF, Round Robin, and their trade-offs.
  • Paging vs segmentation, and what a page fault is.

DBMS

  • Normalisation — 1NF → 3NF with a concrete example; when denormalising is fine.
  • ACID properties, explained in one line each.
  • Indexing — why it speeds reads and slows writes; B-tree intuition.
  • Transactions and isolation levels.

Computer networks

  • The TCP three-way handshake, and TCP vs UDP.
  • The OSI layers — at least name them and give one protocol per layer.
  • DNS resolution, end to end.
  • What happens when you type a URL and press enter — a favourite integrative question.

Revise these out loud; if you can explain each in plain words, you can answer the follow-ups. The prephasz interview prep bundles exactly this checklist.

Put this into practice

Drill these exact patterns with adaptive practice, timed mocks and company-wise assessments on prephasz.

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OS, DBMS and CN: A Quick Revision for Interviews · ZSkillup