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interview questions

  • April 20, 2009 at 3:51 pm

    #981081

    And I would be the first to agree with you, which is why I applied for my current position.

    However, speaking from what life experience I have, I can tell you that, at the point in the question, you may not want the DBA to be the uber-geek, doesn't have any personal skills, can't communicate succinctly, type person. The person you might want is someone who has actual emergency troubleshooting experience and has experience in extremely high stress situations, someone with a 'siege-mentality'. Because, if I'm not mistaken, a company that can lose that kind of money that quickly, is much more likely to have a team, instead of one person.

  • April 20, 2009 at 3:54 pm

    #981083

    Wesley Norton (4/20/2009)

    ...

    However, speaking from what life experience I have, I can tell you that, at the point in the question, you may not want the DBA to be the uber-geek, doesn't have any personal skills, can't communicate succinctly, type person. The person you might want is someone who has actual emergency troubleshooting experience and has experience in extremely high stress situations, someone with a 'siege-mentality'. Because, if I'm not mistaken, a company that can lose that kind of money that quickly, is much more likely to have a team, instead of one person.

    I cannot argue with that.


    Alvin Ramard
    Memphis PASS Chapter[/url]

    All my SSC forum answers come with a money back guarantee. If you didn't like the answer then I'll gladly refund what you paid for it.

    For best practices on asking questions, please read the following article: Forum Etiquette: How to post data/code on a forum to get the best help[/url]

  • April 20, 2009 at 3:57 pm

    #981084

    Wesley Norton (4/20/2009)

    Maybe it's because I'm fairly new at this, or maybe it's the way I think. But I have to hope that my response would be something close to: "I would reach into my desk, pull out the Disaster Procedure Manual, and start with page one." To which the interviewer would undoubtedly reply, "Okay, let's assume there isn't a manual"

    At this point you need to ask yourself, 'Do I really want to work with a company, as the person who this will be coming down on, which does not have a procedure in place for a very foreseeable problem that is capable of costing the company roughly $275 for every second it's down?'

    I'm going to guess that it's because you're fairly new at this. Mind you, there's nothing woing with your viewpoint, as a goal, but the reality is that you've already eliminated 90% of your potential employers, which is generally a bad job-seeking strategy.

    However, I do encourage to encourage your employers to implement this kind of thing. It's great to have, but very few places do it unless they are absolutely required to. Note that for classification purposes, this would be called an "Urgent Incident" or an "Emergency Incident" as the term "Disaster" is usually reserved for something that makes the premises physically untenable.

    [font="Times New Roman"]-- RBarryYoung[/font], [font="Times New Roman"] (302)375-0451[/font] blog: MovingSQL.com, Twitter: @RBarryYoung[font="Arial Black"]
    Proactive Performance Solutions, Inc.     [/font]    [font="Verdana"] "Performance is our middle name."[/font]

  • April 20, 2009 at 4:06 pm

    #981088

    90%?!?

    I'm not disagreeing with you, as I see similar situations in other walks of life, but sheesh, doesn't that just blow your mind? Maybe I have been thinking worst case scenario for so long that it seems common to me to think what would happen in these types of situations.

    Thanks for the tip on the "Urgent Incident" or an "Emergency Incident" verbiage.

  • April 20, 2009 at 4:35 pm

    #981103

    Wesley Norton (4/20/2009)

    90%?!?

    I'm not disagreeing with you, as I see similar situations in other walks of life, but sheesh, doesn't that just blow your mind? Maybe I have been thinking worst case scenario for so long that it seems common to me to think what would happen in these types of situations.

    Thanks for the tip on the "Urgent Incident" or an "Emergency Incident" verbiage.

    It used to blow my mind, 30 years ago. Now it's just how things work. Mind you, virtually all large corporations have "Disaster Recovery" procedures for IS, because they are frequently required to (insurance requirement in many cases, mandated by law in many others). However, as I mentioned before, "Disaster" usually means forced immediate relocation. Corporations as a general rule will not pay for anything in the short-term that only has benefit to them in a possible long-term.

    They might support those things and believe in them but when the cut-backs come (and they always do) those will be the first things to be cut.

    [font="Times New Roman"]-- RBarryYoung[/font], [font="Times New Roman"] (302)375-0451[/font] blog: MovingSQL.com, Twitter: @RBarryYoung[font="Arial Black"]
    Proactive Performance Solutions, Inc.     [/font]    [font="Verdana"] "Performance is our middle name."[/font]

  • April 20, 2009 at 4:45 pm

    #981107

    Good point.

    For the OP:

    I started thinking about how, as an interviewer I would find questions to ask. I would need them to be fairly short with clear, known to be correct, answers. And then it hit me, QotD right here on sqlservercentral.com! I checked and the questions go back to Jul 24, 2003 and have the added benefit of being tagged by category.

    http://qa.sqlservercentral.com/Questions

  • April 20, 2009 at 6:25 pm

    #981138

    Be sure to read the discussions attached to the Questions though. A lot of the questions are somewhat ambiguous and may need clarification to be fair in an interview.

    [font="Times New Roman"]-- RBarryYoung[/font], [font="Times New Roman"] (302)375-0451[/font] blog: MovingSQL.com, Twitter: @RBarryYoung[font="Arial Black"]
    Proactive Performance Solutions, Inc.     [/font]    [font="Verdana"] "Performance is our middle name."[/font]

  • April 21, 2009 at 3:11 am

    #981263

    May be of your interest this link http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sqlserver/bb671430.aspx of MSSQL best practices

  • April 21, 2009 at 7:52 am

    #981436

    Hi,

    Following links are having SQL FAQ...

    http://www.SearchSQLServer.com

    http://www.mssqlcity.com

    http://www.sqlauthority.com

    http://sqlteam

    http://www.databasejournal.com/

    .....

    I would search GOOGLE for more on this...

    I also have some old stuff... if you are interested pl. let me know.

    HTH.

    Thanx.

    Vinay

    Thanx.
    Vinay

    http://rdbmsexperts.com/Blogs/
    http://vinay-thakur.spaces.live.com/
    http://twitter.com/ThakurVinay

  • April 22, 2009 at 4:15 am

    #982042

    Thank you. Very good sites.

  • April 22, 2009 at 7:04 am

    #982161

    This could be an indispensable guide for interviews 😀

    http://www.howtonailaninterview.com/[/url]


    Shamless self promotion - read my blog http://sirsql.net

  • September 22, 2010 at 2:58 am

    #1225387

    Hi,

    you can find a good set of sql server interview questions

    at the following link.

    http://www.wiziq.com/online-class/292863-sql-server-interview-questions

    Thanks

    Regards

    Kolla Sanjeeva Rao

  • September 22, 2010 at 3:07 am

    #1225390

    Great place, thank you

  • January 12, 2011 at 10:21 pm

    #1272801

    paul.starr (4/17/2009)

    any info on really good interview questions for a sql server dba?

    Check here - MS SQL Interview Q&A

    ==================
    Visit my blog!

  • June 20, 2011 at 3:56 am

    #1341019

    First of All,

    I should be aware of the problem before the business looking for the answer. If not I will confirm that I am wokring on the issue and will update you in 10-15 min.

    10-15 min is always enough for you to understand the Problem. I will take the following steps.

    1. Check the database server error log for any obvious failure for the last 30 min.

    2. Check if the network connectivity is fine. Telnet the SQL on the configured port fro the application server

    3. Check the server if there is disk space issue.

    Now I have an more information to handle the problem and probably understood what fixes need to apply.

    Update myLead/Manager that abou the issue and suggest the next steps. Once he approved the changes then go ahead and apply the changes to resolve the issue.

    I and my manager shoould have an idea of how much time it takes fix these klind of problem. So he can communicate to relevent people.

    I willl crack on appying the fixes.

    .....

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