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From my experience, it all depends on who is doing the interview. We
know that some people believe the myth and it is hard to change that
viewpoint. But a lot of times, the one doing the interview wants you to
demonstrate that you have the appropriate technical knowledge. If all
they asked you were a simple answer to a question, that might show that
you have only memorized the information. But by asking a question like
"how often should we rebuild indexes", the appropriate technical
knowledge that should be shown is not a one-answer-fits-all-situtations
response.
Cheers,
Brian
Daniel Roy wrote:
>
> I have a generic question about the "technical interviews" we as DBA
> often have to go through to get a posting (I'm a consultant) or
> position: When interviewed by another DBA, do you ever feel that your
> answers should be tailored by the knowledge/myths of the DBA
> interviewing? For example, I got asked just last week during one of
> these interviews if "a full table scan is bad?". An "ordinary" DBA
> would answer "yes" right away. But anyone either doing some research
> on the topic on internet or trying different scenarios himself knows
> that the answer is "it depends!" (it seems to me that this is the
> answer to most of the intelligent Oracle-related questions). Some more
> examples of tricky questions I had to answer include "how often should
> we rebuild indexes?" (the correct answer is that some indexes should
> never be rebuilt, but try to explain that to someone who rebuilds ALL
> the indexes religeously every 3 months) or "How much bigger would you
> make the buffer pool if the hit ratio was only 80%?". It seems that I
> could go on and talk about each of these questions for half an hour
> easily. I went successfully through that interview, but it's only
> because I played the role of a DBA who follows the myths. Had I
> answered honestly to the questions, I'm sure he would have thought
> "what a freak!", and I would never have heard of them again!
>
> Daniel
-- =================================================================== Brian Peasland oracle_dba_at_remove_spam.peasland.com Remove the "remove_spam" from the email address to email me. "I can give it to you cheap, quick, and good. Now pick two out of the three"Received on Tue May 27 2003 - 13:30:11 CDT