9/22/2010

Oracle DBA interview questions | TechIn

Search Tech Interv iew s

Tech Interviews
Prepare for job interviews with the questions and answers asked by high-tech employers
.NET C++ Da t a ba se G en er a l Ha r dw a r e Ja v a Net w or k in g Pu zzles SA P A BA P Test in g Un ix /Lin u x

Search

Database > > Oracle DBA int erview quest ions

Oracle DBA interview questions

By adm in | Ju n e 1 3 , 2 0 0 4

A reader subm itted this v ia e-m ail w ithout explanation w hether these questions w ere used for hiring a DBA at Oracle Corp., or w hether it was the Oracle database adm in position that som eone interv iewed for som ewhere else. Updat e: The questions were written by Jam es Koopm an for DatabaseJournal back in 2003 . 1 . Explain t he difference bet ween a hot backup and a cold backup and t he benefit s associat ed wit h each. - A hot backup is basically taking a backup of the database while it is still up and running and it m u st be in archiv e log m ode. A cold backup is taking a backup of the database while it is shut down and does not require being in archiv e log m ode. The benefit of taking a hot backup is that the database is still av ailable for use while the backup is occurring and y ou can recov er the database to any point in tim e. The benefit of taking a cold backup is that it is ty pically easier to adm inister the backup and recov ery process. In addition, since y ou are taking cold backups the database does not require being in archiv e log m ode and thus there will be a slight perform ance gain as the database is not cu tting archiv e logs to disk. 2 . You hav e just had t o rest ore from backup and do not hav e any cont rol files. How would y ou go about bringing up t his dat abase? - I would create a text based backup control file, stipulating where on disk all the data files w here and then issue the recov er com m and with the using backup control file clause.
T h is en t r y w a s post ed in Databas e . Book m a r k t h e perm alink . Pos t a co m m ent or lea v e a t r a ck ba ck : Track back URL.

A ds by Goog le

Openings in T ech Mahindra

Exp: 0 to 1 3 Yrs.Sal: 2 5k to 9 5k PM Apply Now & get Multiple Interv iew s
T im esJobs.com /Tech _Ma h in dr a

PL/SQL Developer
Professional PL/SQL Dev elopm ent IDE Trial v ersion av ailable
w w w .a llr ou n da u t om a t ion s.com

Linux adm in interv iew questions

A ds by Goog le

Oracle interv iew questions

Job Interview Question Articles

C# Interv iew Questions and Answers QTP Interv iew Questions and Answers

Free SQL White Paper

Learn how to use replication for better SQL backup & recov ery .
Dou bleT a ke.com

Oracle DBA Courses

Find Top DBA Institutes in India. Get Info on Courses,Adm ission,Fees.
w w w .Sh ik sh a .com /Or a cleDBA -Cou r ses

C+ + Interv iew Questions and Answ ers PHP Interv iew Questions and Answers XML Interv iew Questions and Answers Jav aScript Interv iew Questions and Answ ers Asp.Net Interv iew Questions and Answers J2EE Interv iew Questions and Answ ers ABAP Interv iew Questions and Answers Perl Interv iew Questions and Answers Jav a Interv iew Questions and Answers

Resources
2 0 C OMME NT S ON OR A C LE DBA INT E R V IE W QUE ST IONS Technology Question and Answer Website How to dance around the salary -expectation question 1 0 m istakes m anagers m ake during job interv iews ID Maker Stupid interv iew questions How to Answer These Tricky Interv iew Questions the answer about difference b/w truncate and delete can hav e m ore points. eg. Sev en tips for writing an online profile for LinkedIn,

vidya
Posted 7/14/2004 at 5:59 pm | Pe rmalink

techinterviews.com/oracle-dba-intervie

1/8

9/22/2010 Oracle DBA interview questions | TechIn the answer about difference b/w truncate and delete can hav e m ore points. eg.
truncate does not generate undo, unlike delete operation. delete triggers are not fired for truncate. truncate releases used space and has im plicit com m it(ddl opern.)

My Space or Facebook Video surv eillance Ink cartridges Laptop com puters Affordable life insurance Ink cartridges

Ade
Posted 8/2/2005 at 11:02 am | Pe rmalink

T utorials
AJAX Tutorials Dealing with y our job Getting a job Jav aScript tutorials Job interv iew tips from Yahoo! HotJobs My SQL tutorials Retiring from y our job Ruby on Rails tutorials Salary guide for IT jobs Self-em ploy m ent TechInterv iews guides in PDF Understanding pointers XML Tutorials XUL tutorials

I saw these questions on a web site. Can I hav e answers to them ? 1 . How m any m em ory lay ers are in the shared pool? 2. How do y ou find out from the RMAN catalog if a particular archiv e log has been backed-up? 3 . How can y ou tell how m uch space is left on a giv en file sy stem and how m uch space each of the file sy stem s subdirectories take-up? 4. Define the SGA and: How y ou would configure SGA for a m id-sized OLTP env ironm ent? What is inv olv ed in tuning the SGA? 5. What is the cache hit ratio, what im pact does it hav e on perform ance of an Oracle database and what is inv olv ed in tuning it? 6. Other than m aking use of the statspack utility , what would y ou check when y ou are m onitoring or running a health check on an Oracle 8i or 9 i database? 7 . How do y ou tell w hat y our m achine nam e is and what is its IP address? 8. How would y ou go about v erify ing the network nam e that the local_listener is currently using? 9. You hav e 4 instances running on the sam e UNIX box. How can y ou determ ine w hich shared m em ory and sem aphores are associated w ith which instance? 1 0. What v iew(s) do y ou use to associate a users SQLPLUS session with his o/s process? 1 1 . What is the recom m ended interv al at which to ru n statspack snapshots, and w hy ? 1 2. What spfile/init.ora file param eter exists to force the CBO to m ake the execution path of a giv en statem ent use an index, ev en if the index scan m ay appear to be calculated as m ore costly ? 1 3 . Assum ing today is Monday , how would y ou use the DBMS_JOB package to schedule the execution of a giv en procedure owned by SCOTT to start Wednesday at 9AM and to run subsequently ev ery other day at 2AM. 1 4. How would y ou edit y our CRONTAB to schedule the running of /test/test.sh to run ev ery other day at 2PM? 1 5. What do the 9i dbm s_standard.sql_txt() and dbm s_standard.sql_text() procedures do? 1 6. In which dictionary table or v iew would y ou look to determ ine at which tim e a snapshot or MVIEW last successfully refreshed? 1 7 . How would y ou best determ ine why y our MVIEW cou ldnt FAST REFRESH? 1 8. How does propagation differ between Adv anced Replication and Snapshot Replication (read-only )? 1 9. Which dictionary v iew (s) w ould y ou first look at to understand or get a high-lev el idea of a giv en Adv anced Replication

RSS Feeds
All posts All com m ents

techinterviews.com/oracle-dba-intervie

2/8

9/22/2010
env ironm ent?

Oracle DBA interview questions | TechIn

20. How w ould y ou begin to troubleshoot an ORA-3 1 1 3 error? 21 . Which dictionary tables and/or v iews would y ou look at to diagnose a locking issue? 22 . An autom atic job running v ia DBMS_JOB has failed. Know ing only that its failed, how do y ou approach troubleshooting this issue? 23 . How w ould y ou extract DDL of a table without using a GUI tool? 24 . Youre getting high busy buffer waits - how can y ou find whats causing it? 25. What query tells y ou how m uch space a tablespace nam ed test is taking up, and how m uch space is rem aining? 26 . Database is hung. Old and new user connections alike hang on im pact. What do y ou do? Your SYS SQLPLUS session IS able to connect. 27 . Database crashes. Corruption is found scattered am ong the file sy stem neither of y our doing nor of Oracles. What database recov ery options are av ailable? Database is in archiv e log m ode. 28. Illustrate how to determ ine the am ount of phy sical CPUs a Unix Box possesses (LINUX and/or Solaris). 29 . How do y ou increase the OS lim itation for open files (LINUX and/or Solaris)? 3 0. Prov ide an exam ple of a shell script which logs into SQLPLUS as SYS, determ ines the current date, changes the date form at to include m inutes & seconds, issues a drop table com m and, display s the date again, and finally exits. 3 1 . Explain how y ou would restore a database using RMAN to Point in Tim e? 3 2 . How does Oracle guarantee data integrity of data changes? 3 3 . Which env ironm ent v ariables are absolutely critical in order to run the OUI? 3 4 . What SQL query from v $session can y ou run to show how m any sessions are logged in as a particular user account? 3 5. Why does Oracle not perm it the use of PCTUSED with indexes? 3 6 . What w ould y ou use to im prov e perform ance on an insert statem ent that places m illions of rows into that table? 3 7 . What w ould y ou do with an in-doubt distributed transaction? 3 8. What are the com m ands y oud issue to show the explain plan for select * from dual? 3 9 . In what script is snap$ created? In what script is the scott/tiger schem a created? 40. If y oure unsure in which script a sy s or sy stem -owned object is created, but y ou know its in a script from a specific directory , what UNIX com m and from that directory structure can y ou run to find y our answer? 41 . How would y ou configure y our netw orking files to connect to a database by the nam e of DSS which resides in dom ain icallinc.com ? 42 . You create a priv ate database link and upon connection, fails with: ORA-2085: connects to . What is the problem ? How would y ou go about resolv ing this error? 43 . I hav e m y backup RMAN script called backup_rm an.sh. I am on the

techinterviews.com/oracle-dba-intervie

3/8

9/22/2010

Oracle DBA interview questions | TechIn

target database. My catalog usernam e/password is rm an/rm an. My catalog db is called rm an. How w ould y ou run this shell script from the O/S such that it would run as a background process? 44 . Explain the concept of the DUAL table. 45. What are the w ay s tablespaces can be m anaged and how do they differ? 46 . From the database lev el, how can y ou tell under w hich tim e zone a database is operating? 47 . Whats the benefit of dbm s_stats ov er analy ze? 48. Ty pically , where is the conv entional directory structure chosen for Oracle binaries to reside? 49 . You hav e found corruption in a tablespace that contains static tables that are part of a database that is in NOARCHIVE log m ode. How would y ou restore the tablespace w ithout losing new data in the other tablespaces? 50. How do y ou recov er a datafile that has not been phy sically been backed up since its creation and has been deleted. Prov ide sy ntax exam ple.

khalid
Posted 11/17/2005 at 5:58 am | Pe rmalink

Thank y ou for sending m e the answers

Siva
Posted 3/30/2006 at 5:20 pm | Pe rmalink

How to calculate the perfom ance of Oracle 9 i Databases in HPUNIX?

Venkat
Posted 11/16/2006 at 10:17 am | Pe rmalink

How to defragm ent in Oracle?

Venkat
Posted 11/16/2006 at 10:21 am | Pe rmalink

How to Start the database thru Com m and Prom pt when oracle is stoped in serv ice?

K.Chandrasekhar
Posted 2/17/2007 at 5:56 am | Pe rmalink

1 .how to know how m any instance are up? 2.when w e are taking the hot backup then what is the background process?

anilcr

techinterviews.com/oracle-dba-intervie

4/8

9/22/2010
Posted 4/26/2007 at 2:46 am | Pe rmalink

Oracle DBA interview questions | TechIn

the answer about difference b/w truncate and delete can hav e m ore points. 1 > In truncate ,we cannot rollback the changes m ade to the tables where as in delete we can rollback the changes 2> In truncate,no entry is m ade in ldf file (log data file) In Delete,entry is m ade in ldf file

satya narayana
Posted 6/21/2007 at 9:00 am | Pe rmalink

hi m y nam e is naray ana i am working one of the m nc com pany but i want answeres of these following questions plz help m e any one 1 .1 . Migration of Oracle database from 7 .x.x to 8i.x.x. to 9 i.x.x to 1 0g.x.x Methodologies and steps inv olv ed. We do it by 4 way s: (a) Exp/Im p dum p file (b) Data-pum p (c) by configuring Standby (d) RMAN 2. Standby database its configuration and concept 3 . Database Replication concept 4. Dataguard configuration

harish
Posted 7/1/2007 at 10:23 pm | Pe rmalink

i am just confused w ith 1 . w ht is use of UNDO_RETENTION 2. AND use of undo retention policy 3 . cache hit ratio thank y ou Harish

hemant
Posted 9/17/2007 at 8:42 am | Pe rmalink

The use of undo_retention is that u get inform ation that after how m uch tim e the snapshot too old error will be effectiv e, this error depend upon undo_retention.

Mohammed Yacoob
Posted 10/16/2007 at 6:08 am | Pe rmalink

Hi chandrasekar, The following com m and will giv e the instance inform ation select * from v $instance; when we are taking the hot backup then what is the background process? CKPT background process

techinterviews.com/oracle-dba-intervie

5/8

9/22/2010
Mohammed Yacoob
Posted 2/25/2008 at 1:54 am | Pe rmalink

Oracle DBA interview questions | TechIn

Dear Venkat, for Window or Linux, sqlplus /nolog SQL> startup nom ount ORACLE instance started. > This com m and will show the database files details ( Total SGA, Fixed Size, Variable size, Variable size and Redo details > then connect sy s with sy stem credentail > check wether the User credentail has locked > if its alter the credentail with unlock. Thanks, Moham m ed Yacoob

Mohammed Yacoob
Posted 2/25/2008 at 2:00 am | Pe rmalink

Dear Siv a, There are com m and line procesures are there to check the oracle 91 i perform ance. > Before to test the Oracle 9i find the HPUNIX OS Perform ance counter Thanks, Moham m ed Yacoob

ranjani
Posted 4/22/2008 at 8:17 am | Pe rmalink

delete: this can be rollbacked truncate: this cannot be rollbacked

ranjani
Posted 4/22/2008 at 8:19 am | Pe rmalink

shared pool will hav e library cache and data dictionary cache

naveen
Posted 6/21/2008 at 3:58 am | Pe rmalink

Ans for Question 2 : RMAN> LIST ARCHIVELOG ALL; the abov e com m and list all the archiv elog that has been backup. Nav een

techinterviews.com/oracle-dba-intervie

6/8

9/22/2010

Oracle DBA interview questions | TechIn

T amilselvan
Posted 7/3/2008 at 3:11 am | Pe rmalink

How m any m em ory lay ers are in the shared pool? There are three lay ers in shared pool i) Library cache ii) Data dictonary cache iii) control structures control structures w ill consists of locks and latches

Pradeep Verma
Posted 1/27/2009 at 1:01 am | Pe rmalink

Ans for question 4 4 Dual table is a dum m y table m aintained by oracle serv er, y ou can use it to see current date and tim e etc. select sy sdate from dual the abov e com m and will giv e y ou current sy stem date.

raya tharaka ram

Posted 1/29/2009 at 8:13 am | Pe rmalink

how can y ou perform a baseline backup in oracle dba?

POST A C OMME NT

Your em ail is never published nor shared. Required fields are m arked *
N am e * Em ai l *

Websi te

Com m en t

Post Com m ent

techinterviews.com/oracle-dba-intervie

7/8

9/22/2010

Oracle DBA interview questions | TechIn

Pow er ed by Wo rdPres s . Bu ilt on t h e Them atic Them e Fram ew o rk .

techinterviews.com/oracle-dba-intervie

8/8