1. How many memory layers are in the shared pool?

1/3 of physical memory, can be 2/4k depending on bit of 32 or 64

2. How do you find out from the RMAN catalog if a particular archive log has bee
n backed-up?
The database should be in ARCHIVE mode if you are going to use RMAN as backup me
thod.
3. How can you tell how much space is left on a given file system and how much s
pace each of the file system's subdirectories take-up?
4. Define the SGA and:
How you would configure SGA for a mid-sized OLTP environment?
What is involved in tuning the SGA?
5. What is the cache hit ratio, what impact does it have on performance of an Or
acle database and what is involved in tuning it?
6. Other than making use of the statspack utility, what would you check when you
are monitoring or running a health check on an Oracle 8i or 9i database?
7. How do you tell what your machine name is and what is its IP address?
8. How would you go about verifying the network name that the local_listener is
currently using?
9. You have 4 instances running on the same UNIX box. How can you determine whic
h shared memory and semaphores are associated with which instance?
10. What view(s) do you use to associate a user's SQLPLUS session with his o/s p
rocess?
11. What is the recommended interval at which to run statspack snapshots, and wh
y?
12. What spfile/init.ora file parameter exists to force the CBO to make the exec
ution path of a given statement use an index, even if the index scan may appear
to be calculated as more costly?
13. Assuming today is Monday, how would you use the DBMS_JOB package to schedule
the execution of a given procedure owned by SCOTT to start Wednesday at 9AM and
to run subsequently every other day at 2AM.
14. How would you edit your CRONTAB to schedule the running of /test/test.sh to
run every other day at 2PM?
15. What do the 9i dbms_standard.sql_txt() and
dbms_standard.sql_text() procedures do?
16. In which dictionary table or view would you look to determine at which time
a snapshot or MVIEW last successfully refreshed?
17. How would you best determine why your MVIEW couldn't FAST REFRESH?
18. How does propagation differ between Advanced Replication and Snapshot Replic

ation (read-only)?
19. Which dictionary view(s) would you first look at to
understand or get a high-level idea of a given Advanced Replication environment?
20. How would you begin to troubleshoot an ORA-03113 error?
21. Which dictionary tables and/or views would you look at to diagnose a locking
issue?
22. An automatic job running via DBMS_JOB has failed. Knowing only that "it's fa
iled", how do you approach troubleshooting this issue?
23. How would you extract DDL of a table without using a GUI tool?
24. You're getting high "busy buffer waits" - how can you find what's causing it
?
25. What query tells you how much space a tablespace named "test" is taking up,
and how much space is remaining?
26. Database is hung. Old and new user connections alike hang on impact. What do
you do? Your SYS SQLPLUS session IS able to connect.
27. Database crashes. Corruption is found scattered among the file system neithe
r of your doing nor of Oracle's. What database recovery options are available? D
atabase is in archive log mode.
28. Illustrate how to determine the amount of physical CPUs a Unix Box possesses
(LINUX and/or Solaris).
29. How do you increase the OS limitation for open files (LINUX and/or Solaris)?
30. Provide an example of a shell script which logs into SQLPLUS as SYS, determi
nes the current date, changes the date format to include minutes & seconds, issu
es a drop table command, displays the date again, and finally exits.
31. Explain how you would restore a database using RMAN to Point in Time?
32. How does Oracle guarantee data integrity of data changes?
33. Which environment variables are absolutely critical in order to run the OUI?
34. What SQL query from v$session can you run to show how many sessions are logg
ed in as a particular user account?
35. Why does Oracle not permit the use of PCTUSED with indexes?
36. What would you use to improve performance on an insert statement that places
millions of rows into that table?
37. What would you do with an "in-doubt" distributed transaction?
38. What are the commands you'd issue to show the explain plan for "select * fro
m dual"?
39. In what script is "snap$" created? In what script is

the "scott/tiger" schema created?

40. If you're unsure in which script a sys or system-owned object is created, bu
t you know it's in a script from a specific directory, what UNIX command from th
at directory structure can you run to find your answer?
41. How would you configure your networking files to connect to a database by th
e name of DSS which resides in domain icallinc.com?
42. You create a private database link and upon connection, fails with: ORA-2085
: connects to <fully qualified remote db name>. What is the problem? How would y
ou go about resolving this error?
43. I have my backup RMAN script called "backup_rman.sh". I am on the target dat
abase. My catalog username/password is rman/rman. My catalog db is called rman.
How would you 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 ways tablespaces can be managed and how do they differ?
46. From the database level, how can you tell under which time zone a database i
s operating?
47. What's the benefit of "dbms_stats" over "analyze"?
48. Typically, where is the conventional directory structure chosen for Oracle b
inaries to reside?
49. You have found corruption in a tablespace that contains static tables that a
re part of a database that is in NOARCHIVE log mode. How would you restore the t
ablespace without losing new data in the other tablespaces?
50. How do you recover a datafile that has not been physically been backed up si
nce its creation and has been deleted. Provide syntax example.
51. Draft one mock email requesting your on-technical management grant you downt
ime to (provide justification where applicable) complete the following tasks:
(1) Generate statistics on a large table;
(2) Generate an RDA
if you don't know what an RDA is please say so.
(3) Rename datafiles.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------1. Three users at a time giving the following command:

alter database backup controlfile to trace;
How can you differentiate the file using the filename itself?
2. When you execute:
alter tablespace begin backup;

How can Oracle engine can identify that the corresponding datafiles are in backu
pmode?
3. When exporting using filesize parameter I have generated three files. How the
oracle name this three files?
4. One of my rollback segments got corrupted? How can I rectified?
5. When yesterday developer gives the following command:
select count(*) from
it gives the output within minutes
Today the same command takes hours? What will u check?
6. When the developer trying to compile the package. But the database gets hange
d? What will u check?
7. What is the use of query in Tkprof?
8. What is the maximum number of value allowed in parse column?
9. How can we force the query not to use the index? (Something else then a using
a hint)
10. Till yesterday the query is running smoothly. But today the develper is comp
laining? How will u start your tuning?
11. What is the difference between count(*) and count(1)?
12. As a Oracle DBA what are all the UNIX file you should be familar with?