Re: Interview type Question

Mladen Gogala wrote:
> On Wed, 24 Sep 2008 07:46:39 -0700, raja wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I am learning Oracle, my PM asked me the following question, Please
>> help me on this :
>>
>>
>> You are a new employee at the company and the only Oracle DBA. You
>> were just informed by the management that one of the Oracle DB
>> Server is performing very badly for about a week now and that
>> immediate analysis should be conducted. You are not familiar with
>> the applications or the databases yet, but they ask you to find the
>> problem as soon as possible. Please detail your plan of action,
>> tools that you will use along the process, what would you check and
>> how would you continue if you did not find any issue at the level or
>> resource you are checking. Please explain things in a high level
>> along with assumptions and recommendations.
>>
>>
>> Please give me ur step-by-step level to proceed for the above
>> scenario.
>>
>>
>> Thanks in Advance.
>> With Regards,
>> Raja.
>
> That's simple: you will send an email, detailing your problem to
> jonathan_at_jlcomp.demon.co.uk or tanel_at_tanelpoder.com and one of them
> to you site ASAP.

If I were the OP, I would question the managements statement that the Oracle DB Server is performing badly.
How can they come to that conclusion without any proper analysis? I would be even more suspicious if the same management at the same time draws the exact same conclusion about their DB2 database server, again without any proper analysis as they don't have an inhouse DB2 DBA either... (see c.d.ibm-db2).
I didn't check the MS-groups, but wouldn't be surprised that "one of their MS SQL Server servers is performing very badly for about a week now".

My crystal ball is telling me this isn't a DB issue at all, but rather a network or storage issue or such.

-- 
Jeroen