21. How would you determine the time zone under which a database was operating?

select DBTIMEZONE from dual;

22. Explain the use of setting GLOBAL_NAMES equal to TRUE.

Setting GLOBAL_NAMES dictates how you might connect to a database. This variable is either
TRUE or FALSE and if it is set to TRUE it enforces database links to have the same name as the
remote database to which they are linking.

23. What command would you use to encrypt a PL/SQL application?

WRAP

24. Explain the difference between a FUNCTION, PROCEDURE and PACKAGE.

A function and procedure are the same in that they are intended to be a collection of PL/SQL
code that carries a single task. While a procedure does not have to return any values to the
calling application, a function will return a single value. A package on the other hand is a
collection of functions and procedures that are grouped together based on their commonality to a
business function or application.

25. Explain the use of table functions.

Table functions are designed to return a set of rows through PL/SQL logic but are intended to be
used as a normal table or view in a SQL statement. They are also used to pipeline information in
an ETL process.

26. Name three advisory statistics you can collect.

Buffer Cache Advice, Segment Level Statistics, & Timed Statistics

27. Where in the Oracle directory tree structure are audit traces placed?

In unix $ORACLE_HOME/rdbms/audit, in Windows the event viewer

28. Explain materialized views and how they are used.

Materialized views are objects that are reduced sets of information that have been summarized,
grouped, or aggregated from base tables. They are typically used in data warehouse or decision
support systems.

29. When a user process fails, what background process cleans up after it?

PMON

30. What background process refreshes materialized views?

The Job Queue Processes.

31. How would you determine what sessions are connected and what resources they are waiting
for?

Use of V$SESSION and V$SESSION_WAIT

32. Describe what redo logs are.

Redo logs are logical and physical structures that are designed to hold all the changes made to a
database and are intended to aid in the recovery of a database.

33. How would you force a log switch?

ALTER SYSTEM SWITCH LOGFILE;

34. Give two methods you could use to determine what DDL changes have been made.

You could use Logminer or Streams

35. What does coalescing a tablespace do?

Coalescing is only valid for dictionary-managed tablespaces and de-fragments space by

combining neighboring free extents into large single extents.

36. What is the difference between a TEMPORARY tablespace and a PERMANENT tablespace?

A temporary tablespace is used for temporary objects such as sort structures while permanent
tablespaces are used to store those objects meant to be used as the true objects of the database.

37. Name a tablespace automatically created when you create a database.

The SYSTEM tablespace.

38. When creating a user, what permissions must you grant to allow them to connect to the
database?

Grant the CONNECT to the user.

39. How do you add a data file to a tablespace?

ALTER TABLESPACE ADD DATAFILE SIZE

40. How do you resize a data file?

ALTER DATABASE DATAFILE RESIZE ;

41. What view would you use to look at the size of a data file?

DBA_DATA_FILES

42. What view would you use to determine free space in a tablespace?

DBA_FREE_SPACE

43. How would you determine who has added a row to a table?

Turn on fine grain auditing for the table.

44. How can you rebuild an index?

ALTER INDEX REBUILD;

45. Explain what partitioning is and what its benefit is.

Partitioning is a method of taking large tables and indexes and splitting them into smaller, more
manageable pieces.

46. You have just compiled a PL/SQL package but got errors, how would you view the errors?

SHOW ERRORS

47. How can you gather statistics on a table?

The ANALYZE command.

48. How can you enable a trace for a session?

Use the DBMS_SESSION.SET_SQL_TRACE or

Use ALTER SESSION SET SQL_TRACE = TRUE;

49. What is the difference between the SQL*Loader and IMPORT utilities?

These two Oracle utilities are used for loading data into the database. The difference is that the
import utility relies on the data being produced by another Oracle utility EXPORT while the
SQL*Loader utility allows data to be loaded that has been produced by other utilities from
different data sources just so long as it conforms to ASCII formatted or delimited files.

50. Name two files used for network connection to a database.

TNSNAMES.ORA and SQLNET.ORA

Technical - UNIX

Every DBA should know something about the operating system that the database will be running
on. The questions here are related to UNIX but you should equally be able to answer questions
related to common Windows environments.

1. How do you list the files in an UNIX directory while also showing hidden files?

ls -ltra

2. How do you execute a UNIX command in the background?

Use the "&"

3. What UNIX command will control the default file permissions when files are created?

Umask

4. Explain the read, write, and execute permissions on a UNIX directory.

Read allows you to see and list the directory contents.

Write allows you to create, edit and delete files and subdirectories in the directory.

Execute gives you the previous read/write permissions plus allows you to change into the
directory and execute programs or shells from the directory.

5. the difference between a soft link and a hard link?

A symbolic (soft) linked file and the targeted file can be located on the same or different file
system while for a hard link they must be located on the same file system.

6. Give the command to display space usage on the UNIX file system.

df -lk

7. Explain iostat, vmstat and netstat.

Iostat reports on terminal, disk and tape I/O activity.

Vmstat reports on virtual memory statistics for processes, disk, tape and CPU activity.

Netstat reports on the contents of network data structures.

8. How would you change all occurrences of a value using VI?

Use :%s///g

9. Give two UNIX kernel parameters that effect an Oracle install

SHMMAX & SHMMNI

10. Briefly, how do you install Oracle software on UNIX.

Basically, set up disks, kernel parameters, and run orainst.

I hope that these interview questions were not too hard. Remember these are "core" DBA
questions and not necessarily related to the Oracle options that you may encounter in some
interviews. Take a close look at the requirements for any job and try to extract questions that
interviewers may ask from manuals and real life experiences. For instance, if they are looking for
a DBA to run their databases in RAC environments, you should try to determine what hardware
and software they are using BEFORE you get to the interview. This would allow you to brush up
on particular environments and not be caught off-guard. Good luck!
11g
1. Secure Files
Basically, this is an enhancement to LOBs which allows traditional files to be stored in the
database. Oracle is claiming similar or better performance to a local file system. They've done
this before. Originally this feature was in 8i as the Internet File System (IOS). Later, it was in 9i as
Oracle Files Online (OFO). Oracle tends to get things right on the third try. If this works, it could
be a serious threat to traditional NAS, such as NetApp.

2. Multimedia
Oracle has increased the functionality of images and video inside the database. Basically, Oracle
is going after the multimedia and video-streaming market with this feature. Also, Oracle has
introduced support for the DICOM format, used by the medical industry for storing X Ray images
and the like.

3. 3D and Spatial
There are many enhancements to the spatial package included in previous releases.

4. Native Compilation
Previous attempts by Oracle to allow compilation of PL/SQL procedures have been weak. You
needed a C compiler handy. You had to link it in. This one is much better. The PL/SQL source is
translated directly into a DLL (or similar concept on the target OS). No linking is required.

5. XML Improvements
If you use XML in the Oracle database, you should be interested in this release. I don't do this, so
the enhancement is greek to me. But check it out.

6. Java Enhancments
Similarly, this is only interesting if you use the Java features in Oracle. Again, many
enhancements. Not relevant to me.

7. RAC
Oracle is claiming a 70% improvement on read intensive workloads on this release. We'll see.
Keep reading my blog (shown below), and I will update you on our testing.

8. OEL/Grid Control Enhancements

Needless to say, they tweaked the GUI. It is much nicer. You can tile instance charts for the first
time in a RAC environment, so you can see all the instances at the same time. In 10g, this was a
real pain. Much better.

9. ADDM and AWR "RAC-ized"

The performance tools are now much more RAC aware.
10. ASM Enhancements
There are many changes to the Oracle storage layer. For example, ASM is now aware if you are
running RAC and allows a local read to occur on mirrored ASM volumes that span the RAC.
Likewise, you have faster resync of ASM mirrored volumes. You can also perform a rolling
upgrade for the first time on your ASM instances. One I like is the ability to relabel and mount on
the same database server a clone of your ASM disk groups created by such things as
snapshots.

11. Results Cache

There is now a new memory structure called a results cache. This is an optional feature, but
should prove very useful for data warehousing. Basically, this is a structure which holds the
results of a query. A subsidiary query that occurs later can use the results cache to structure its
results. This can save significant I/O if it is done correctly. There is a lot of work to be done in
figuring out how to make this work well.

12. Optimizer Changes

Oracle is recognizing that the optimizer is not a black box that works perfectly. The philosophy on
11g is to allow for stability and controlled evolution and migration of execution plans. A plan which
will result in a better result than the existing plan will be used. Previously, this was not the case,
and physical changes in the database could result in much worse performance. Similarly, the
gathering of statistics has changed. Previously, if you analyzed a table, that set of statistics took
effect immediately. Now, this set of statistics is marked as pending. You apply the statistics once
you verify that they produce better plans.

There are many other enhancements as well. Let me know if you would like more of this stuff.