• What is normalization? Explain different levels of normalization?

o Check out the article Q100139 from Microsoft knowledge base and of
course, there's much more information available in the net. It'll be a
good idea to get a hold of any RDBMS fundamentals text book,
especially the one by C. J. Date. Most of the times, it will be okay if
you can explain till third normal form.
• What is denormalization and when would you go for it?
o As the name indicates, denormalization is the reverse process of
normalization. It's the controlled introduction of redundancy in to the
database design. It helps improve the query performance as the
number of joins could be reduced.
• How do you implement one-to-one, one-to-many and many-to-many
relationships while designing tables?
o One-to-One relationship can be implemented as a single table and
rarely as two tables with primary and foreign key relationships. One-
to-Many relationships are implemented by splitting the data into two
tables with primary key and foreign key relationships. Many-to-Many
relationships are implemented using a junction table with the keys
from both the tables forming the composite primary key of the
junction table. It will be a good idea to read up a database designing
fundamentals text book.
• What's the difference between a primary key and a unique key?
o Both primary key and unique enforce uniqueness of the column on
which they are defined. But by default primary key creates a clustered
index on the column, where are unique creates a nonclustered index
by default. Another major difference is that, primary key doesn't allow
NULLs, but unique key allows one NULL only.
• What are user defined datatypes and when you should go for them?
o User defined datatypes let you extend the base SQL Server datatypes
by providing a descriptive name, and format to the database. Take for
example, in your database, there is a column called Flight_Num which
appears in many tables. In all these tables it should be varchar(8). In
this case you could create a user defined datatype called
Flight_num_type of varchar(8) and use it across all your tables. See
sp_addtype, sp_droptype in books online.
• What is bit datatype and what's the information that can be stored
inside a bit column?
o Bit datatype is used to store boolean information like 1 or 0 (true or
false). Untill SQL Server 6.5 bit datatype could hold either a 1 or 0 and
there was no support for NULL. But from SQL Server 7.0 onwards, bit
datatype can represent a third state, which is NULL.
• Define candidate key, alternate key, composite key.
o A candidate key is one that can identify each row of a table uniquely.
Generally a candidate key becomes the primary key of the table. If the
table has more than one candidate key, one of them will become the
primary key, and the rest are called alternate keys. A key formed by
combining at least two or more columns is called composite key.
• What are defaults? Is there a column to which a default can't be
bound?
o A default is a value that will be used by a column, if no value is
supplied to that column while inserting data. IDENTITY columns and

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 timestamp columns can't have defaults bound to them. See CREATE
DEFAULT in books online.
• What is a transaction and what are ACID properties?
o A transaction is a logical unit of work in which, all the steps must be
performed or none. ACID stands for Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation,
Durability. These are the properties of a transaction. For more
information and explanation of these properties, see SQL Server books
online or any RDBMS fundamentals text book.
• Explain different isolation levels An isolation level determines the
degree of isolation of data between concurrent transactions?
o The default SQL Server isolation level is Read Committed. Here are the
other isolation levels (in the ascending order of isolation): Read
Uncommitted, Read Committed, Repeatable Read, Serializable. See
SQL Server books online for an explanation of the isolation levels. Be
sure to read about SET TRANSACTION ISOLATION LEVEL, which
lets you customize the isolation level at the connection level.
o Read Committed - A transaction operating at the Read Committed level
cannot see changes made by other transactions until those
transactions are committed. At this level of isolation, dirty reads are
not possible but nonrepeatable reads and phantoms are possible.
o Read Uncommitted - A transaction operating at the Read Uncommitted
level can see uncommitted changes made by other transactions. At
this level of isolation, dirty reads, nonrepeatable reads, and phantoms
are all possible.
o Repeatable Read - A transaction operating at the Repeatable Read
level is guaranteed not to see any changes made by other transactions
in values it has already read. At this level of isolation, dirty reads and
nonrepeatable reads are not possible but phantoms are possible.
o Serializable - A transaction operating at the Serializable level
guarantees that all concurrent transactions interact only in ways that
produce the same effect as if each transaction were entirely executed
one after the other. At this isolation level, dirty reads, nonrepeatable
reads, and phantoms are not possible.
• CREATE INDEX myIndex ON myTable(myColumn)What type of Index
will get created after executing the above statement?
o Non-clustered index. Important thing to note: By default a clustered
index gets created on the primary key, unless specified otherwise.
• What's the maximum size of a row?
o 8060 bytes. Don't be surprised with questions like 'what is the
maximum number of columns per table'. 1024 columns per table.
Check out SQL Server books online for the page titled: "Maximum
Capacity Specifications". Explain Active/Active and Active/Passive
cluster configurations Hopefully you have experience setting up cluster
servers. But if you don't, at least be familiar with the way clustering
works and the two clusterning configurations Active/Active and
Active/Passive. SQL Server books online has enough information on
this topic and there is a good white paper available on Microsoft site.
Explain the architecture of SQL Server This is a very important
question and you better be able to answer it if consider yourself a
DBA. SQL Server books online is the best place to read about SQL
Server architecture. Read up the chapter dedicated to SQL Server
Architecture.

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 • What is lock escalation?
o Lock escalation is the process of converting a lot of low level locks (like
row locks, page locks) into higher level locks (like table locks). Every
lock is a memory structure too many locks would mean, more memory
being occupied by locks. To prevent this from happening, SQL Server
escalates the many fine-grain locks to fewer coarse-grain locks. Lock
escalation threshold was definable in SQL Server 6.5, but from SQL
Server 7.0 onwards it's dynamically managed by SQL Server.
• What's the difference between DELETE TABLE and TRUNCATE TABLE
commands?
o DELETE TABLE is a logged operation, so the deletion of each row gets
logged in the transaction log, which makes it slow. TRUNCATE TABLE
also deletes all the rows in a table, but it won't log the deletion of each
row, instead it logs the deallocation of the data pages of the table,
which makes it faster. Of course, TRUNCATE TABLE can be rolled back.
TRUNCATE TABLE is functionally identical to DELETE statement with no
WHERE clause: both remove all rows in the table. But TRUNCATE
TABLE is faster and uses fewer system and transaction log resources
than DELETE. The DELETE statement removes rows one at a time and
records an entry in the transaction log for each deleted row.
TRUNCATE TABLE removes the data by deallocating the data pages
used to store the table's data, and only the page deallocations are
recorded in the transaction log. TRUNCATE TABLE removes all rows
from a table, but the table structure and its columns, constraints,
indexes and so on remain. The counter used by an identity for new
rows is reset to the seed for the column. If you want to retain the
identity counter, use DELETE instead. If you want to remove table
definition and its data, use the DROP TABLE statement. You cannot use
TRUNCATE TABLE on a table referenced by a FOREIGN KEY constraint;
instead, use DELETE statement without a WHERE clause. Because
TRUNCATE TABLE is not logged, it cannot activate a trigger. TRUNCATE
TABLE may not be used on tables participating in an indexed view
• Explain the storage models of OLAP
o Check out MOLAP, ROLAP and HOLAP in SQL Server books online for
more infomation.
• What are the new features introduced in SQL Server 2000 (or the
latest release of SQL Server at the time of your interview)? What
changed between the previous version of SQL Server and the current
version?
o This question is generally asked to see how current is your knowledge.
Generally there is a section in the beginning of the books online titled
"What's New", which has all such information. Of course, reading just
that is not enough, you should have tried those things to better
answer the questions. Also check out the section titled "Backward
Compatibility" in books online which talks about the changes that
have taken place in the new version.
• What are constraints? Explain different types of constraints.
o Constraints enable the RDBMS enforce the integrity of the database
automatically, without needing you to create triggers, rule or defaults.
Types of constraints: NOT NULL, CHECK, UNIQUE, PRIMARY KEY,
FOREIGN KEY. For an explanation of these constraints see books online

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 for the pages titled: "Constraints" and "CREATE TABLE", "ALTER
TABLE"
• What is an index? What are the types of indexes? How many
clustered indexes can be created on a table? I create a separate index
on each column of a table. What are the advantages and
disadvantages of this approach?
o Indexes in SQL Server are similar to the indexes in books. They help
SQL Server retrieve the data quicker. Indexes are of two types.
Clustered indexes and non-clustered indexes. When you create a
clustered index on a table, all the rows in the table are stored in the
order of the clustered index key. So, there can be only one clustered
index per table. Non-clustered indexes have their own storage
separate from the table data storage. Non-clustered indexes are stored
as B-tree structures (so do clustered indexes), with the leaf level
nodes having the index key and it's row locater. The row located could
be the RID or the Clustered index key, depending up on the absence or
presence of clustered index on the table. If you create an index on
each column of a table, it improves the query performance, as the
query optimizer can choose from all the existing indexes to come up
with an efficient execution plan. At the same t ime, data modification
operations (such as INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE) will become slow, as
every time data changes in the table, all the indexes need to be
updated. Another disadvantage is that, indexes need disk space, the
more indexes you have, more disk space is used.
• What is RAID and what are different types of RAID configurations?
o RAID stands for Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks, used to
provide fault tolerance to database servers. There are six RAID levels 0
through 5 offering different levels of performance, fault tolerance.
MSDN has some information about RAID levels and for detailed
information, check out the RAID advisory board's homepage
• What are the steps you will take to improve performance of a poor
performing query?
o This is a very open ended question and there could be a lot of reasons
behind the poor performance of a query. But some general issues that
you could talk about would be: No indexes, table scans, missing or out
of date statistics, blocking, excess recompilations of stored procedures,
procedures and triggers without SET NOCOUNT ON, poorly written
query with unnecessarily complicated joins, too much normalization,
excess usage of cursors and temporary tables. Some of the tools/ways
that help you troubleshooting performance problems are: SET
SHOWPLAN_ALL ON, SET SHOWPLAN_TEXT ON, SET STATISTICS IO
ON, SQL Server Profiler, Windows NT /2000 Performance monitor,
Graphical execution plan in Query Analyzer. Download the white paper
on performance tuning SQL Server from Microsoft web site. Don't
forget to check out sql-server-performance.com
• What are the steps you will take, if you are tasked with securing an
SQL Server?
o Again this is another open ended question. Here are some things you
could talk about: Preferring NT authentication, using server, databse
and application roles to control access to the data, securing the
physical database files using NTFS permissions, using an unguessable
SA password, restricting physical access to the SQL Server, renaming

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 the Administrator account on the SQL Server computer, disabling the
Guest account, enabling auditing, using multiprotocol encryption,
setting up SSL, setting up firewalls, isolating SQL Server from the web
server etc. Read the white paper on SQL Server security from
Microsoft website. Also check out My SQL Server security best
practices
• What is a deadlock and what is a live lock? How will you go about
resolving deadlocks?
o Deadlock is a situation when two processes, each having a lock on one
piece of data, attempt to acquire a lock on the other's piece. Each
process would wait indefinitely for the other to release the lock, unless
one of the user processes is terminated. SQL Server detects deadlocks
and terminates one user's process. A livelock is one, where a request
for an exclusive lock is repeatedly denied because a series of
overlapping shared locks keeps interfering. SQL Server detects the
situation after four denials and refuses further shared locks. A livelock
also occurs when read transactions monopolize a table or page, forcing
a write transaction to wait indefinitely. Check out SET
DEADLOCK_PRIORITY and "Minimizing Deadlocks" in SQL Server books
online. Also check out the article Q169960 from Microsoft knowledge
base.
• What is blocking and how would you troubleshoot it?
o Blocking happens when one connection from an application holds a
lock and a second connection requires a conflicting lock type. This
forces the second connection to wait, blocked on the first. Read up the
following topics in SQL Server books online: Understanding and
avoiding blocking, Coding efficient transactions. Explain CREATE
DATABASE syntax Many of us are used to creating databases from the
Enterprise Manager or by just issuing the command: CREATE DATABAE
MyDB.
• But what if you have to create a database with two filegroups, one on
drive C and the other on drive D with log on drive E with an initial size
of 600 MB and with a growth factor of 15%?
o That's why being a DBA you should be familiar with the CREATE
DATABASE syntax. Check out SQL Server books online for more
information.
• How to restart SQL Server in single user mode? How to start SQL
Server in minimal configuration mode?
o SQL Server can be started from command line, using the
SQLSERVR.EXE. This EXE has some very important parameters with
which a DBA should be familiar with. -m is used for starting SQL
Server in single user mode and -f is used to start the SQL Server in
minimal configuration mode. Check out SQL Server books online for
more parameters and their explanations.
• As a part of your job, what are the DBCC commands that you
commonly use for database maintenance?
o DBCC CHECKDB, DBCC CHECKTABLE, DBCC CHECKCATALOG, DBCC
CHECKALLOC, DBCC SHOWCONTIG, DBCC SHRINKDATABASE, DBCC
SHRINKFILE etc. But there are a whole load of DBCC commands which
are very useful for DBAs. Check out SQL Server books online for more
information.

Database Ques Page 5 of 9

 • What are statistics, under what circumstances they go out of date,
how do you update them?
o Statistics determine the selectivity of the indexes. If an indexed
column has unique values then the selectivity of that index is more, as
opposed to an index with non-unique values. Query optimizer uses
these indexes in determining whether to choose an index or not while
executing a query. Some situations under which you should update
statistics: 1) If there is significant change in the key values in the
index 2) If a large amount of data in an indexed column has been
added, changed, or removed (that is, if the distribution of key values
has changed), or the table has been truncated using the TRUNCATE
TABLE statement and then repopulated 3) Database is upgraded from
a previous version. Look up SQL Server books online for the following
commands: UPDATE STATISTICS, STATS_DATE, DBCC
SHOW_STATISTICS, CREATE STATISTICS, DROP STATISTICS,
sp_autostats, sp_createstats, sp_updatestats
• What are the different ways of moving data/databases between
servers and databases in SQL Server?
o There are lots of options available, you have to choose your option
depending upon your requirements. Some of the options you have are:
BACKUP/RESTORE, dettaching and attaching databases, replication,
DTS, BCP, logshipping, INSERT...SELECT, SELECT...INTO, creating
INSERT scripts to generate data.
• Explain different types of BACKUPs avaialabe in SQL Server? Given a
particular scenario, how would you go about choosing a backup plan?
o Types of backups you can create in SQL Sever 7.0+ are Full database
backup, differential database backup, transaction log backup, filegroup
backup. Check out the BACKUP and RESTORE commands in SQL
Server books online. Be prepared to write the commands in your
interview. Books online also has information on detailed
backup/restore architecture and when one should go for a particular
kind of backup.
• What is database replication? What are the different types of
replication you can set up in SQL Server?
o Replication is the process of copying/moving data between databases
on the same or different servers. SQL Server supports the following
types of replication scenarios: · Snapshot replication · Transactional
replication (with immediate updating subscribers, with queued
updating subscribers) · Merge replication See SQL Server books online
for indepth coverage on replication. Be prepared to explain how
different replication agents function, what are the main system tables
used in replication etc.
• How to determine the service pack currently installed on SQL Server?
o The global variable @@Version stores the build number of the
sqlservr.exe, which is used to determine the service pack installed. To
know more about this process visit SQL Server service packs and
versions.
• What are cursors? Explain different types of cursors. What are the
disadvantages of cursors? How can you avoid cursors?
o Cursors allow row-by-row processing of the resultsets. Types of
cursors: Static, Dynamic, Forward-only, Keyset-driven. See books
online for more information. Disadvantages of cursors: Each time you

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 fetch a row from the cursor, it results in a network roundtrip, where as
a normal SELECT query makes only one roundtrip, however large the
resultset is. Cursors are also costly because they require more
resources and temporary storage (results in more IO operations).
Further, there are restrictions on the SELECT statements that can be
used with some types of cursors. Most of the times, set based
operations can be used instead of cursors. Here is an example: If you
have to give a flat hike to your employees using the following criteria:
Salary between 30000 and 40000 -- 5000 hike Salary between 40000
and 55000 -- 7000 hike Salary between 55000 and 65000 -- 9000
hike. In this situation many developers tend to use a cursor, determine
each employee's salary and update his salary according to the above
formula. But the same can be achieved by multiple update statements
or can be combined in a single UPDATE statement as shown below:
o UPDATE tbl_emp SET salary = CASE WHEN salary BETWEEN 30000
AND 40000 THEN salary + 5000 WHEN salary BETWEEN 40000 AND
55000 THEN salary + 7000 WHEN salary BETWEEN 55000 AND 65000
THEN salary + 10000 END
o Another situation in which developers tend to use cursors: You need to
call a stored procedure when a column in a particular row meets
certain condition. You don't have to use cursors for this. This can be
achieved using WHILE loop, as long as there is a unique key to identify
each row. For examples of using WHILE loop for row by row
processing, check out the 'My code library' section of my site or search
for WHILE. Write down the general syntax for a SELECT statements
covering all the options. Here's the basic syntax: (Also checkout
SELECT in books online for advanced syntax).
o SELECT select_list [INTO new_table_] FROM table_source [WHERE
search_condition] [GROUP BY group_by_expression] [HAVING
search_condition] [ORDER BY order_expression [ASC | DESC] ]
• What is a join and explain different types of joins.
o Joins are used in queries to explain how different tables are related.
Joins also let you select data from a table depending upon data from
another table. Types of joins: INNER JOINs, OUTER JOINs, CROSS
JOINs. OUTER JOINs are further classified as LEFT OUTER JOINS,
RIGHT OUTER JOINS and FULL OUTER JOINS. For more information
see pages from books online titled: "Join Fundamentals" and "Using
Joins".
• Can you have a nested transaction?
o Yes, very much. Check out BEGIN TRAN, COMMIT, ROLLBACK, SAVE
TRAN and @@TRANCOUNT
• What is an extended stored procedure? Can you instantiate a COM
object by using T-SQL?
o An extended stored procedure is a function within a DLL (written in a
programming language like C, C++ using Open Data Services (ODS)
API) that can be called from T-SQL, just the way we call normal stored
procedures using the EXEC statement. See books online to learn how
to create extended stored procedures and how to add them to SQL
Server. Yes, you can instantiate a COM (written in languages like VB,
VC++) object from T-SQL by using sp_OACreate stored procedure.
Also see books online for sp_OAMethod, sp_OAGetProperty,
sp_OASetProperty, sp_OADestroy. For an example of creating a COM

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 object in VB and calling it from T-SQL, see 'My code library' section of
this site.
• What is the system function to get the current user's user id?
o USER_ID(). Also check out other system functions like USER_NAME(),
SYSTEM_USER, SESSION_USER, CURRENT_USER, USER,
SUSER_SID(), HOST_NAME().
• What are triggers? How many triggers you can have on a table? How
to invoke a trigger on demand?
o Triggers are special kind of stored procedures that get executed
automatically when an INSERT, UPDATE or DELETE operation takes
place on a table. In SQL Server 6.5 you could define only 3 triggers
per table, one for INSERT, one for UPDATE and one for DELETE. From
SQL Server 7.0 onwards, this restriction is gone, and you could create
multiple triggers per each action. But in 7.0 there's no way to control
the order in which the triggers fire. In SQL Server 2000 you could
specify which trigger fires first or fires last using sp_settriggerorder.
Triggers can't be invoked on demand. They get triggered only when an
associated action (INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE) happens on the table on
which they are defined. Triggers are generally used to implement
business rules, auditing. Triggers can also be used to extend the
referential integrity checks, but wherever possible, use constraints for
this purpose, instead of triggers, as constraints are much faster. Till
SQL Server 7.0, triggers fire only after the data modification operation
happens. So in a way, they are called post triggers. But in SQL Server
2000 you could create pre triggers also. Search SQL Server 2000
books online for INSTEAD OF triggers. Also check out books online for
'inserted table', 'deleted table' and COLUMNS_UPDATED()
• There is a trigger defined for INSERT operations on a table, in an
OLTP system. The trigger is written to instantiate a COM object and
pass the newly insterted rows to it for some custom processing. What
do you think of this implementation? Can this be implemented better?
o Instantiating COM objects is a time consuming process and since you
are doing it from within a trigger, it slows down the data insertion
process. Same is the case with sending emails from triggers. This
scenario can be better implemented by logging all the necessary data
into a separate table, and have a job which periodically checks this
table and does the needful.
• What is a self join? Explain it with an example.
o Self join is just like any other join, except that two instances of the
same table will be joined in the query. Here is an example: Employees
table which contains rows for normal employees as well as managers.
So, to find out the managers of all the employees, you need a self join.
o CREATE TABLE emp ( empid int, mgrid int, empname char(10) )
o INSERT emp SELECT 1,2,'Vyas' INSERT emp SELECT 2,3,'Mohan'
INSERT emp SELECT 3,NULL,'Shobha' INSERT emp SELECT
4,2,'Shridhar' INSERT emp SELECT 5,2,'Sourabh'
o SELECT t1.empname [Employee], t2.empname [Manager] FROM emp
t1, emp t2 WHERE t1.mgrid = t2.empid Here's an advanced query
using a LEFT OUTER JOIN that even returns the employees without
managers (super bosses)

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 o SELECT t1.empname [Employee], COALESCE(t2.empname, 'No
manager') [Manager] FROM emp t1 LEFT OUTER JOIN emp t2 ON
t1.mgrid = t2.empid

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