Re: Rant

mkb, you're right, the "glory" is in tuning nowadays, but i beg to differ, since if you can't/won't do recovery when the chips are down, then the point is moot.

I specialize in backup/recovery but getting damagement to think its important today when the db is running fine, is tough. Its only when its time to do recovery does damagement all of a sudden think its important.

Joe

mkb wrote:

>Ok, I need to vent a little.
>
>Last week, I was asked to do some tech interviews over
>the phones for a mid level DBA position. Someone with
>about 2-3 years experience.
>
>I don't consider myself a real smart DBA, nor do I
>think that I ask particularly tough questions. The
>questions that I ask potential candidates are soley
>based on what is on the resume. So I figure if
>someone has, say, hot backups or SQL tuning on their
>resumes, I'd expect them to be able to hold a fairly
>intelligent conversation about these topics. No such
>luck!
>
>What really frustrated me, and what I really want to
>get out of my system, is that nobody that I talked to,
>had a real good concept of hot backups. Forget about
>recovery. I asked each and every candidate who
>claimed to have done hot backups, just give me a high
>level overview of how you do a hot backup. Don't care
>about syntax, just give me the mechanics. The answers
>I got were completely off base, baffling and
>frustrating. Some of these folks claimed to have 5
>years experience!!!
>
>'Well, we use scripts to do these, so I'm not sure how
>these are done...' (But it says on your resume you've
>done this???)
>
>'Oh, I take the tablespace offline, and copy the
>datafile to tape...' (Unless I'm mistaken, that's not
>how a hot backup is done, right?)
>
>'Well, I use the export utility, and as the backup
>starts, it is written to the dump file.' (Huh? What?)
>
>'During this time, everything is written to the redo
>logs and not to the tablespace...' (You've been
>reading one of those books, haven't you?)
>
>I also asked them how they'd put a tablespace in
>backup mode. Simple enough, right? Not one of them
>got it right. Not even close. Didn't have clue as to
>what I was talking about. Fair enough, you don't
>know. Well how about a simple recovery scenario. I
>asked every candidate how they would do an online
>recover of a datafile while the database was still in
>use. No ideas. Not even close.
>
>I dunno, perhaps I'm spoilt by being a member of this
>list? Perhaps I expect every candidate to be as
>knowledgeable as you guys? Perhaps I'm asking too
>much?
>
>Rant over. Thanks for listening.
>
>mkb
>
>
>__________________________________________________
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>http://health.yahoo.com
>

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Author: Joe Testa
  INET: jtesta_at_dmc-it.com

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