RE: Questions for a Jr. DBA

From: Michael Dinh <mdinh_at_XIFIN.Com>
Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2011 09:39:46 -0800
Message-ID: <D29F9902E534D5478F2E83FD6A44B30625F1273E73_at_mail02.mba.xifin.com>

Do you prefer cats or dogs?

Michael Dinh

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Every time I am asked to interview a junior dba I always start to request what is expected from the candidate and the activities suppossed to be covered. I have a small guide as a starting point and after that getting deeper as much as possible depending on candidate and skills requested:

1. Explain diff between instance and db (include as much details as possible)
2. Mention all oracle objects you know (expect from user to mention, materialized views, external tables, partitioned tables, etc)
3. Explain types of shutdowns and startup process. (include as much details as possible)
4. What do you do when users say:
   1. my session is not responding
   2. my query is very slow
   3. entire db reponse time is very slow
5. Differences among sp, packages, functions, triggers, anonymous blocks
6. What is an inner view? (tricky question, since you are talking about oracle objects)
7. How to kill a session, unix and windows
8. Differences between users and schemas
9. What is OFA
10. How do you do your everyday activities/work? OEM, command line, third party tools

After those basic question, you can change to an upper level:

What is the process that writes data from files to data buffer? Describe advantages of LMT againts DMT
Where is the SCN (system change number)? How to pin an object and what is the reason to do this? How to rename a database
What is a deadlock and how can be solved? What is a crash recovery and when happens? Diff between a hotbackup and a cold backup What is a latch
What is the SGA and how is formed
What steps do you take when troubleshooting and oracle performance issue?

and so on..

but, no matter candidate level, you need to ask:

What do you do when you don't know how to solve a problem? How do you deal with top management pressure when having critical issues?

regards,

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From: oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org [mailto:oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org] On Behalf Of Guillermo Alan Bort Sent: Domingo, 06 de Febrero de 2011 05:06 p.m. To: oracle-l-freelists
Subject: Questions for a Jr. DBA
So, I am in the process of reviewing resumes from several JR and SSR candidates for the team. The question I came up with is, what kind of questions (technical) should I ask during the interview. I can't use the same questions I'd use with a Sr. DBA.

The questions i've come up with so far are the following:

1. Difference between EXTENT and BLOCK
2. Difference between USER and ROLE. When would you use each?
3. Command to extend a Tablespace (tricky question? should it be datafile?)
4. Command to backup controlfiles (all you can think of)
5. Steps to switch archivelog on or off.
6. Minimum requirements in order to take a level 1 online backup (tricky question?)
7. What are the minimum required files to be backed up in order to be able to recreate the database from scratch in the event of complete media failure?

I may come up with more, but that's what I have so far...

thanks in advance
Alan.-

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Received on Tue Feb 08 2011 - 11:39:46 CST