Re: Technical Interviews

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

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Brian Peasland
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