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55 Junior SQL Server DBA Interview Questions
55 Junior SQL Server DBA Interview Questions
Written by Administrator
Thursday, 11 December 2008 14:11 -
Problem
My organization is in the process of hiring a junior SQL Server DBA to add to our team. What
are some fair questions to ask as a portion of the interview process? I want to make sure we
hire someone who has a good base of knowledge. I am concerned are Senior SQL Server
DBAs are looking to stump the candidates which is not really my goal. Do you have any
suggestions?
Solution
Trying to assess any technical person's skill set can be difficult. An interview process with
appropriate questions for your environment and the correct skill set are key. In some respects
understanding what a candidate knows and does not know could be equally beneficial. What is
meant by that is you want to know what knowledge someone has on day one and what you will
need to teach them overtime. As such, here are a baseline set of questions for a junior SQL
Server DBA:
- Question 1 - What are 2 options to validate whether or not a backup will restore
successfully?
- Restore the backup as a portion of a testing process or log shipping.
- Restore the backup with the Verify Only option.
- Additional information - Verifying Backups with the RESTORE VERIFYONLY Statement
- Question 2 - How can you issue a full backup and not interrupt the LSN's?
- Issue a copy only backup.
- Additional information - COPY_ONLY Backups with SQL Server 2005
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Junior SQL Server DBA Interview Questions
Written by Administrator
Thursday, 11 December 2008 14:11 -
Performance Tuning
- Question 1 - Name as many native SQL Server performance monitoring and tuning tools
that you know of and their associated value.
- System objects - System objects such as sp_who2, sp_lock, fn_get_sql, etc. provide a
simple means to capture basic metrics related to locking, blocking, executing code, etc.
- Additional information - SQL Server Command Line Tools To Manage Your Server
- Perfmon - Perfmon is responsible for macro level metrics related to processes and sub
systems.
- Additional information - Free Microsoft Tools to Help Setup and Maintain PerfMon
- Dynamic Management Views and Functions - New to SQL Server 2005, the Dynamic
Management Views and Functions offer a real time view into the SQL Server sub systems.
- Additional information - Dynamic Management Views and Functions in SQL Server 2005
- SQL Server Management Studio Built-in Performance Reports - As part of the installation
of SQL Server 2005 a number of performance-related reports are installed. To get to these
reports open the SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) and connect to a SQL Server 2005
instance. If you don't have an instance of Reporting Services installed then the icon will be
disabled.
- Additional information - Built-In Performance Reports in SQL Server 2005
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Junior SQL Server DBA Interview Questions
Written by Administrator
Thursday, 11 December 2008 14:11 -
Maintenance
- Question 1 - What are the three options in SQL Server 2005 to rebuild indexes?
- CREATE INDEX with DROP_EXISTING
- DROP INDEX and CREATE INDEX
- ALTER INDEX
- Additional information - Index Rebuilds in SQL Server 2000 vs SQL Server 2005
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Junior SQL Server DBA Interview Questions
Written by Administrator
Thursday, 11 December 2008 14:11 -
Database Design
- Question 1 - What happens when you add a column in the middle of a table (dbo.Test1) in
Management Studio?
- Management Studio creates a temporary table called dbo.Tmp_Test1 with the new
structure.
- If there is data in the original table dbo.Test1 this data is inserted into the new temp table
dbo.Tmp_Test1 (now you have two sets of the same data).
- The original table dbo.Test1 is dropped.
- The new table dbo.Tmp_Test1 is renamed to dbo.Test1.
- If the table has indexes all of the indexes are recreated.
- Additional information - Modifying SQL Server database tables and keeping like columns
together
- Question 2 - What are included columns with respect to SQL Server indexing?
- A new type of index was developed in SQL Server 2005 that assists in covering queries:
Indexes With Included Columns. Indexes with Included Columns are nonclustered indexes that
have the following benefits:
- Columns defined in the include statement, called non-key columns, are not counted in the
number of columns by the Database Engine.
- Columns that previously could not be used in queries, like nvarchar(max), can be included
as a non-key column.
- A maximum of 1023 additional columns can be used as non-key columns.
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Junior SQL Server DBA Interview Questions
Written by Administrator
Thursday, 11 December 2008 14:11 -
- Additional information - Improve Performance with SQL Server 2005 Covering Index
Enhancements
Next Steps
- To the interviewers:
- As you prepare for a junior level SQL Server interview, be sure to have appropriate
questions in place to challenge the candidate and understand their skill level on any given topic.
- Be sure to ask questions to understand the depth and breadth of the candidates
knowledge base.
- To the interviewees:
- Be prepared for your technical interviews. The questions in this tip are intended for a
newbie SQL Server DBA, but more often than not, you will get some very challenging questions
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Junior SQL Server DBA Interview Questions
Written by Administrator
Thursday, 11 December 2008 14:11 -
and scenarios from interviewers. Many of these situations and questions will probably not be
familiar to you, so think quickly and be sure to prepare a response to questions you simple do
not know the answer to.
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