Interviewing a DBA
I'm not a fan of trivia style interview questions. Yes, I ask a few because you have to in order to immediately eliminate the completely unqualified applicants. Even those types of questions, in my opinion, need to be focused on concepts and not syntax. The reason we have the Books Online with SQL Server is because you shouldn't have to memorize every possible command along with all their parameters. Want to know how to write a MERGE query? Look it up. What does a MERGE query do? That you ought to know. I think concepts are important. Questions about the recovery models within SQL Server aren't trivia about the system, they're trying to get to your understanding of how point in time recovery works. I don't really like posting interview…