

How many memory layers are in the shared pool?

 How do you find out from the RMAN catalog if a particular archive log has been backed-up?
 How can you tell how much space is left on a given file system and how much space each of the file
system’s subdirectories take-up?
 Define the SGA and how you would configure SGA for a mid-sized OLTP environment? What is involved
in tuning the SGA?
 What is the cache hit ratio, what impact does it have on performance of an Oracle database and what is
involved in tuning it?
 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?
 How do you tell what your machine name is and what is its IP address?
 How would you go about verifying the network name that the local_listener is currently using?
 You have 4 instances running on the same UNIX box. How can you determine which shared memory and
semaphores are associated with which instance?
 What view(s) do you use to associate a user’s SQLPLUS session with his o/s process?
 What is the recommended interval at which to run statspack snapshots, and why?
 What spfile/init.ora file parameter exists to force the CBO to make the execution path of a given
statement use an index, even if the index scan may appear to be calculated as more costly?
 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.
 How would you edit your CRONTAB to schedule the running of /test/test.sh to run every other day at
2PM?
 What do the 9i dbms_standard.sql_txt() and dbms_standard.sql_text() procedures do?
 In which dictionary table or view would you look to determine at which time a snapshot or MVIEW last
successfully refreshed?
 How would you best determine why your MVIEW couldn’t FAST REFRESH?
 How does propagation differ between Advanced Replication and Snapshot Replication (read-only)?
 Which dictionary view(s) would you first look at to understand or get a high-level idea of a given
Advanced Replication environment?
 How would you begin to troubleshoot an ORA-3113 error?
 Which dictionary tables and/or views would you look at to diagnose a locking issue?
 An automatic job running via DBMS_JOB has failed. Knowing only that “it’s failed’, how do you
approach troubleshooting this issue?
 How would you extract DDL of a table without using a GUI tool?
 You’re getting high “busy buffer waits’ - how can you find what’s causing it?
 What query tells you how much space a tablespace named “test’ is taking up, and how much space is
remaining?
 Database is hung. Old and new user connections alike hang on impact. What do you do? Your SYS
SQLPLUS session IS able to connect.
 Database crashes. Corruption is found scattered among the file system neither of your doing nor of
Oracle’s. What database recovery options are available? Database is in archive log mode.
 Illustrate how to determine the amount of physical CPUs a Unix Box possesses (LINUX and/or Solaris).
 How do you increase the OS limitation for open files (LINUX and/or Solaris)?
 Provide an example of a shell script which logs into SQLPLUS as SYS, determines the current date,
changes the date format to include minutes & seconds, issues a drop table command, displays the date again,
and finally exits.
 Explain how you would restore a database using RMAN to Point in Time?
 How does Oracle guarantee data integrity of data changes?
 Which environment variables are absolutely critical in order to run the OUI?
 What SQL query from v$session can you run to show how many sessions are logged in as a particular
user account?
 Why does Oracle not permit the use of PCTUSED with indexes?
 What would you use to improve performance on an insert statement that places millions of rows into that
table?
 What would you do with an “in-doubt” distributed transaction?
 What are the commands you’d issue to show the explain plan for “select * from dual’?
 In what script is “snap$” created? In what script is the “scott/tiger” schema created?
 If you’re unsure in which script a sys or system-owned object is created, but you know it’s in a script from
a specific directory, what UNIX command from that directory structure can you run to find your answer?
 How would you configure your networking files to connect to a database by the name of DSS which
resides in domain icallinc.com?
 You create a private database link and upon connection, fails with: ORA-2085: connects to . What is the
problem? How would you go about resolving this error?
 I have my backup RMAN script called “backup_rman.sh”. I am on the target database. 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?
 Explain the concept of the DUAL table.
 What are the ways tablespaces can be managed and how do they differ?
 From the database level, how can you tell under which time zone a database is operating?
 What’s the benefit of “dbms_stats” over “analyze”?
 Typically, where is the conventional directory structure chosen for Oracle binaries to reside?
 You have found corruption in a tablespace that contains static tables that are part of a database that is in
NOARCHIVE log mode. How would you restore the tablespace without losing new data in the other
tablespaces?
 How do you recover a datafile that has not been physically been backed up since its creation and has been
deleted. Provide syntax example.