The following questions have been developed to afford a reasonable view into the skills, experience,
and qualifications of someone applying for the position of Oracle DBA.
Relevant follow-up questions should be assumed. |
- If you were assigned to managing 10-20 production databases. What tools will you want and why?
- Assuming the above ... design your backup strategy on the white board. Ask any questions required to gather the information necessary to do so.
- Assuming the above ... what are you going to do to make sure these databases are properly configured for security, stability, scalability, and high availability?
- Assuming the above ... describe your activities from the beginning to the end of your work day.
- What is Jonathan Lewis' book about and what was the most important thing you learned from reading it?
- What is Cary Millsap's book about and what is the most important thing you learned from reading it?
- What was the last class you took to improve your skills and what is the most important thing you learned from it?
- Describe the best and worst days of your career as a DBA.
- Someone just called you on the phone and told you that no one can connect to the Accounts Payable application.
Describe, in detail, what you will do to resolve the issue?
- You just got an email from the help desk saying the Distribution system is running really slowly. Describe in detail what will you do to resolve the issue?
- A table in your DSS system has a bitmap index on one column. You update one byte in one row. How much redo will be generated and why?
- What are the issues related to running nologging transactions on a production server?
- What are the implications of a database with multiple data block sizes? When might you choose non-standard block sizes?
- Describe, in detail, what happens when the following commands are issued in sequence: STARTUP NOMOUNT, ALTER DATABASE MOUNT, ALTER DATABASE OPEN, SHUTDOWN NORMAL.
In what version of Oracle would your answer not be correct?
- What is the worst system failure you have experienced in your career as a DBA and what was your part in resolving it?
- What is your favorite new feature in 11gR2 and why?
- What will you do if your immediate supervisor asks you to grant the DBA privilege to the Vice President of Marketing?
- An employee just emailed you that they just, minutes before, deleted all of the rows in a configuration table. What will you do?
- If the position involves RAC: In what way is Oracle's claim that any application can run on RAC not true?
- If the position involves DataGuard: Why might you want to have more than one listener on each server?
- What are the best and worst features of MyOracleSupport?
- Describe the steps you would use to apply a PSU or CPU to a database.
- What is an RDA?
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The following questions have been developed to afford a reasonable view into the skills, experience,
and qualifications of someone applying for the position of SQL and/or PL/SQL Developer.
Relevant follow-up questions should be assumed. |
- When is it appropriate to use PL/SQL rather than SQL?
- When is it appropriate to use Dynamic rather than static SQL?
- What is the difference between an implicit cursor and an explicit cursor? Write an example of each on the whiteboard.
- Explain the Oracle transaction model including MVCC and SCNs.
- Explain the Oracle locking model and the proper use and variants of FOR UPDATE.
- Your code is generating ORA-01555s. What are the possible causes?
- How do the SAVE EXCEPTIONS and LIMITS clauses work?
- What is the last book you read to improve your development skills and what is the most important new thing you learned from it?
- What as the last class you took to improve your development skills and what is the most important new thing you learned from it?
- Why does Tom Kyte say that "triggers are evil?"
- Explain SQL Injection works and how you would prevent it.
- What are your four favorite Oracle supplied built-in packages and why?
- What is partition pruning and how does it work? Provide an example of where you would expect it to not work.
- What is DBMS_XPLAN and how have you used it?
- Under what situations would you consider the use of a function based index?
- What is the biggest technical mistake you have made during your career as an Oracle developer?
- What is your favorite new feature in 11gR2 and why?
- Which PL/SQL warning has been most valuable to you?
- What would you do if an explain plan indicated that your code was very fast but when run it took hours to complete?
- Which hints do you regularly use and why?
- Describe an application function that can only be reliably performed by use of a pragma.
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