DBA interviews

From: ryan gaffuri <ryan.gaffuri_at_comcast.net>
Date: Fri, 20 Aug 2004 17:45:59 -0400
Message-ID: <01c101c486ff$14c3b850$350a5444@ryan2le36ofjce>

Another thread got me to think that this might be a good topic. What types of questions do you ask for a senior level position? Most interviews I have had have been really easy. I had one that was 3.5 hours, but it was just hours of the same stuff... not real hard. Most of the 'tricky' stuff are picky little syntax things that I think are silly. I have seen some interviews posted on the web where they ask tremendous numbers of really detailed questions on all sorts of topics.

The three questions I always ask no matter what are the following:

Select, from,where, group by, having, order by: What order are these processed in? Then I go into the implications. I'm basically looking to see if the person understands the set based nature of SQL.
The following is a really tricky counter-intuitive SQL question, that I have never seen in practice(got it out of an academic textbook. Its really simple to do in relational algebra) Don't them use Oracle either. I want them to do it on a white board(mainly for intimidation, I want to get rid of people who give up real quick). I don't expect people to get it most of the time. I just want to see how hard you try. Most people won't even give it a good try. There are two solutions.

You have 3 tables. Saliors, BoatsXSailors, Boats. This is a many to many relationship. Assume the keys are Sailor_id, salXBoat_id, Boat_id. Find all the sailors that have used all the boats.

I ask other stuff depending on what I am looking for, but I always like to ask those.

3. Got this one off asktom. Draw me a picture of the Oracle database including all background process, memory structures, and file systems. Then I ask about interactions. I don't want it memorized, but I want big picture knowledge about redo, undo, etc...

I ask other stuff depending on what I am looking for. What do you ask? What traits are you looking for? I'm sure some of you have really hard interviews...

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Received on Fri Aug 20 2004 - 16:41:54 CDT