Hi Gordon,
Here is a rough compilation of the answers I got when I asked the LZDBA
group what questions we should ask a person who we are interviewing.
Thanks again to everyone who answered about a month ago.
Maggi

For a person who really claimed to be worked as DBA ask
* The procedure of installing oracle patches
If I am looking to hire an experienced dba, an area that I question is:
1. How many members do they usually put in a Redo log group?
2. to describe the process of changing the size of the Redo logs.
These two questions helps me to discover if they actually understand
what Redo Logs are for and how to manage them.
1. How would the DBA go about converting to a single database instead of
the fifty?
2. What would be the steps to ensure recovery of these 50 databases?
3. How to get out of the 8i environment? -- I know your company has the
most critical applications running on 8i and the COTS vendor has gone
out of business.
4. Why should not everyone get the DBA privilege? or root?
5. Why should the company actually do anything in MySQL?

5+ years experience
A) installing, upgrading, and supporting Oracle database software
B) Associated Oracle Technology stack in a multi-tier environment such
as database/applications/wed/reports, and optional/other server
environment
C) 10g, 9i product versions in UNIX environments is a must.
D) configuration, load balancing, backup/recovery, sizing and space
management, PL/SQL tuning, diagnostics, OEM and other tools.
E) Creating/managing/resolving Oracle TAR's


You can ask them to describe the steps they used the last time they
restored a database? This would provide an idea of whether or not they
have and could restore a database

How and when would they use partitioning? Tells a little of what they
know about partitioning

What sources other than Oracle Metalink do they use for reference?
Tells how resourceful they are.

What Oracle books do they have in their library? Tells if they are
continuously trying to learn on their own, the only way you can keep up.

I usually start with a real life scenario such as; a developer just came
up and said this query normally runs 15 minutes and today it has been
running for an hour and a half. Describe what you would do to see if
you could determine what might be causing the problem? Shows the
approach they take to problem resolution, tells whether or not they can
help a developer with a problem.

I have a friend who believes the best question is to ask them to diagram
on a white board the internal processes that Oracle goes through to
update or delete a record. Only heavy weights are likely to be able to
handle this one.


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