Oracle DBA Technical Interview Preparation tips…
Most of Oracle DBA interview questions are highly technical in nature, and they cover a large area around Database administration, how an Oracle Database interacts with other systems, and also looks for your knowledge around specific business needs of a firm, which rely heavily on the databases to run their organization.
We can categorize the Oracle DBA interview questions into the following topics,
Oracle Database Administration:
Oracle Database Administration being the expected core-skill, this is by far the most important skill. Following are the few basic questions usually asked:
- Questions on Oracle installation processes and its different flavors.
- Questions on specifications of an operating system to install Oracle and hardware specifications related to it.
- Various questions on issues of licensing and getting in touch with Oracle Support team.
- Questions on Maintenance and Administration process, information on providing different level of access, firewall configurations needed to prevent the data theft and virus attacks on Oracle Database.
- Questions on creating relational database in Oracle, maintain data integrity, reduce data-redundancy and performance tuning.
- Questions on normalization of database, its advantages and disadvantages.
- Questions on interviewee’s experience around installing Oracle on UNIX and Linux systems.
Oracle Database usage and various operations on Oracle Database:
This is used in day-to-day work of an Oracle DBA. Most of the organization that used Oracle is expected to have a decent size IT department. If the organization already has an Oracle Database set up, the interview questions revolve around this. Following questions are expected to be asked:
- How is SQL query language structured?
- Information on relational database tables and views. How are tables different from views and the advantages of each .
- How can the relational database tables used to maximize performance and minimize data-redundancy?
- Questions based on query optimization, full table scans and indexing on a relational database, advantages of a highly indexed database and disadvantages associated with it.
- Questions on different types of keys in a database, their usage, semantics and constraints attached to each of them. Primary keys, composite keys, foreign keys are some of the major keys that you should know about.
- You may be asked to write a database query using well known languages like mySQL.
- Questions on stored procedures and triggers.
- How to compile and maintain stored procedures and triggers.
Domain specific knowledge about Oracle Database and its administration:
Oracle Database Administration varies across different domains. Telecom domain might have a very different usage of an Oracle Database, versus an investment bank. A lot of Data mining companies need specialized Oracle Database administrator who knows specific Data mining techniques like OLAP and OLTP. Investment banking sector looks for a Database Administrator who knows Oracle Financials. You should have adequate knowledge about the earlier domains that you have worked on as well as some knowledge about the new client’s domain for which you have come for the interview.
So, if you preparing for an interview keep in mind the above points when you prepare the questions. Technical know-how along with the domain knowledge and expertise are combined together to form the basis of Oracle Database Administration Interview Questions.
There are lots of tricky and real time scenario queries asked during technical interview. You should be confidence to address each query. If you have some good and depth knowledge then it is not tough to understand those queries and you are able to clear interview very easily.
