Help with technical interview question for hiring DBA

[jannat]

Hi Everyone,

I am a DBA in my company and we are looking to hire another DBA. We are about to interview people and I am in charge of the technical interview. Anyone can help me with some questionare which can be asked to determine the person's knowledge level?

Any help will be appreciated.

Thanks!

[MAK]

OK. Let me give you all questions that you can ask, but I am going to be your candidate.

Usually ask the candidate about his exposure and experience. Based on that the questions will change. Based on their answers your qustion changes

These are some general interview questions. If you need answers for this, call me for an interview

a. what backup strategy you used to follow in your client place.
b. You are not a Local Admin for a SQL Server box but you are a SA in that box. How will you take backup from production and move the backup file to QA box.
c. We have a Database with 10 filegroups. How would i make that to 1 primary filegroup.
d. My data file is 1 GB but my tranlog is 15 GB. Whats wrong? How would I fix it.
e. Did you happen to know any undocumented Stored procedures?
f. How would you find what version of SQL Server I am running.
g. What would be the easy and right step to migrate from production 6.5 to SQL 2000 development box. Latency is not important.
h. when i run sp_changedbowner i am getting an error 'already a user in th database ', what should I do to rectify it.
i. A table has index. and I am importing 5 million records. when i run any query it takes longer than expected. what should I do?
j. When will u usually run DBCC commands and why?
k. I have deleted a static table accidentatly in production. How will I bring it back.
l. Some of the developers are the owner of the certain objects. how would you make all the owners to a single owner name DBO
m. I have a database DB1 in production and DB2 in QA. I created a DTS package in QA box which points to QA and does some transofrmation. When i move to Production what are the changes I have to do
n. what are the various ways to copy dts packages from one server to another server.
o. what are the SQL Server services that run in a NT box?
p. How will you send email messages from a cluster sql server box through sql jobs?
q. difference between active/passive and active/active sql servers
r. Have you tried any hetrogenouse replication like to oracle/sysbase/db2 etc?
s. What is partitioned view
t. Have you created any Userdefined functions in SQL Server 7.0
u. Difference between sp_who and sp_who2
v. When i click on the errorlog in EM why it is taking 30 min to open. How would I rectify it.
w. Say microsoft released SP4 for SQL Server 2000 today. When you will install Sp4 on your servers.
x. A sql server box was crashed. and u can able to retrieve only .mdf file and no backups were retrieved. how will restore the database from .mdf
y. I have 3 sql servers. Now my development team need to write a query that gets data from all the 3 servers. What are the basic steps you have to do in order to enable them to write such a query.
z. What is your billing rate?

[mist]

I think you missed out

e)2) If you do, do you rely on them to do your job, and what will you do if they aren't there in the next version of SQL Server?

[Anu]

Good Questions

One more questions.

How will you make SQL Server to use more memory?
What method you use and on what editions.

How will you do capacity planning for sqlserver databases

[skhanal]

Wow this gives me an idea for what to prepare for as an interviewee.

In an interview, you really have that much time to ask so many technical questions. I usually ask very broad questions to see the problem solving skills, analysis skills and to check the attitude of the person. If you doubt that the person is bluffing then you can shoot questions from this list to verify it.

[MAK]

Its always funny when I do interview to hire DBA and when I myself was/is a candidate for a DBA job.

I had experience like 4 hr interview for a stupid 2 month contract. And the interview was with 4 different persons. And the Client is very small and miser in billing rate. Before that I had technical interview with couple of middle men.

In one of my client all I had was telephonic interview (Just Conversation) for 10 min. They were just impressed by my resume. The contract was for 1 yr.

When I select Junior DBA for my client it all depends on How the client wants it.