SQL Server DBA Interview questions and answers

Transactional Replication would useful when maintaining a copy of a transactional table such as sales order tables etc. Replication is a feature in SQL Server that helps us publish database objects and data and copy (replicate) it to one or more destinations. It is often considered as one of the High-Availability options. One of the advantages of Replication is that it can be configured on databases that are in a simple recovery model. Primarily, the recovery model is chosen keeping in view the amount of data loss one can afford. If one expects to have minimal or no data loss, choosing the Full recovery model is a good choice.

sql dba interview questions

The interviewer is likely trying to gauge the DBA’s level of experience with SQL Server. Performance tuning is an important skill for a DBA to have because it can help improve the speed and efficiency of SQL Server operations. By asking this question, the interviewer can get a better sense of the DBA’s expertise and whether they would be able to handle performance-related issues. There are a few reasons why an interviewer would ask this question to a SQL DBA.

How to fetch common records from two tables?

Find the best person for the role by reviewing your applicants’ skills and inviting the most knowledgeable applicants to an interview afterward. The fastest way to complete both these steps is to use our SQL Server skills test and the interview questions from this article. Evaluate whether your candidates’ skills are sufficient for a senior-level database administrator role by asking them some of the questions below. This answer should hit the important notes about recovery models, log backups, RTO and RPO.

As a result, bytes’ numeric values are completely dependent on comparison and sorting. TEXT values behave similarly to a character string or a non-binary string. The comparison/sorting of TEXT is completely dependent on the character set collection. The DENSE_RANK() function assigns a distinct rank to each row within a partition based on the provided column value, with no gaps.

What are some of the most common mistakes made by SQL DBAs?

For example, they may say that they thoroughly analyze issues to implement the right actions and eliminate the problems they have found. In the past, your applicant may have had to handle complaints about the database’s performance and needed to regularly monitor the database to solve the issue. In short, if a database administrator wanted to schedule jobs, they would use SQL Agent to assist them. Candidates should know that checkpoints truncate the transaction log until the start of the oldest open transaction, and the system writes the buffer cache’s pages to a disk. They may also explain that by storing the transactions that engineers commit, the cache enhances the performance of the SQL server.

  • The “Star Schema” is crucial for its simplicity and efficiency in Power BI data modeling.
  • Interested in becoming an Azure SQL DBA but don’t know how to start?
  • For example, they may say that they thoroughly analyze issues to implement the right actions and eliminate the problems they have found.
  • RDBMS is one of the most commonly used databases to date, and therefore SQL skills are indispensable in most of the job roles.
  • Managing large data sets involves techniques like indexing, partitioning, query optimization, and using Columnstore indexes for large-scale analytics.

If the primary replica goes down, the secondary replica is promoted as primary. The maximum backup retention depends on the service tiers, and the basic has 7 days while the standard, premium service tier offers 35 days backup retention period. The SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machines (VM) enables users to deploy a full version of SQL Server without managing the underlying infrastructure. Interested in becoming an Azure SQL DBA but don’t know how to start? This article prepares you for the Azure SQL DBA interview by providing reference material links. @Ishtiaq, I agree performance tuning is a good topic, but for HA/DR and Security, it seems not easy unless we can provide an environment (which may be more complex).

What is Azure SQL Database?

This is important because it allows the DBA to identify potential performance issues and investigate them further. Additionally, it helps the DBA to keep track of changes how to become a sql dba developer to the SQL Server environment and ensure that the system is running optimally. To gauge the DBA’s level of experience with different disaster recovery solutions.

  • The INTERSECT operator is used to combine the results of both queries into a single row.
  • You may also supply parameters to a stored procedure so that it can act based on the value(s) of the parameter(s) given.
  • Users can configure these rules to ensure that each user sees only the data relevant to their role, enhancing security and confidentiality.
  • The most common types are INNER JOIN, LEFT JOIN, RIGHT JOIN, and FULL JOIN.
  • To ensure that the DBA is familiar with the latest backup and restore technologies and techniques.

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