DBA in training: Preparing for interviews - Simple Talk

The series so far:

1. DBA in training: So, you want to be a DBA…
2. DBA in training: Preparing for interviews

Ah, the big black box – the technical interview. You’ve heard about them, but maybe you have never been through one – and it feels like a final exam without a study guide. Let’s take a moment to discuss the different interview scenarios, the best way to prepare, and some ways of answering the “What is your biggest weakness” and the “What questions do you have” scenarios.

Preparation begins long before you submit applications. Start by downloading SQL Server Developer Edition, installing the AdventureWorks database, or the StackOverflow database – or make your own. Then start working on your TSQL. There are a wealth of resources on the internet to help – both free and low cost. Look at RedGate, SQLSkills, Brent Ozar, Kathi Kellenberger, Bert Wagner (to name a few!). If you are confident in your TSQL skills, then work on actual database management. Ensure that you understand the rudiments of backups, restores, RPO and RTO, security and internals. If you can confidently write queries, manage automated backups and restores, properly write and maintain indexing and troubleshoot issues on your practice instance, that is one step toward being able to manage many instances. If any of this is Greek to you, don’t worry – I will cover these later.

Overall preparation

Hopefully, you have read up on the company when you submitted your application. You should have a basic understanding of what they do and what they are trying to achieve. That can help you to better understand how you can contribute toward that goal.

But what if I have never worked as a DBA in my life! How can I help them?

I am glad you asked! Yes, you’re green, but that doesn’t mean you have nothing to offer. Consider how you have contributed toward the growth of other places you have worked. Can you show where you went above and beyond to meet the need of past positions you held? If you went to school or boot camp, do you have internship experience you can cite? Maybe you have worked in a related field and have experience with TSQL or SAN management that you can leverage.

You may have gone to college straight out of school. In that case, you may have to think a little more creatively. Did you do any volunteer work or projects with databases? How can you demonstrably show your drive and passion for excelling in this field?

When I was breaking into this profession, I did have a work history – just nothing in the technical field. I had to rely on great personal recommendations and what I could come up with to show my passion and ability to be taught. My capstone project in college revolved around SQL Server (and Access). I ensured that I had mentors to guide me. I bought books and began reading whatever blogs I could get my hands on to prepare myself. I won’t lie; I had to submit a lot of applications before the right opportunity came along. If it had not, I would have bloomed where I was planted and waited for my chance while I continued to teach myself. Whenever I see someone going out of their way from the love for what they want to do, it gets my attention, and I don’t believe I am alone in that observation.

Finally, do you have background experience in the company’s field? For instance, if you have applied to be a DBA at a hospital, do you have clinical experience? If you are applying to work in the financial industry, do you have an understanding of business practices? Especially at small companies, having a DBA who understands not only SQL Server internals, but who can also speak to the business users in language that they can understand may provide an advantage that is of interest to the company.

Before I was hired as a DBA, I submitted an application to write reports for the place where I was presently working. After I got the DBA job, my current employer found out (too late) about my application. They would have hired me for the new position, but my application got lost in the shuffle and wasn’t discovered in time. Why would they have hired me for a technical job that I had no experience doing? I had five years’ worth of knowledge of the company, where I had worked for five years. The business users would have wanted that bridge between the business and the technical. Every little bit helps.

I was once helping to interview candidates for an ETL position. One of my favorite questions was, “Tell me about the most challenging project you ever took ownership of, and how you saw it through.” One of the best answers I ever received was from a candidate who told me that she was assigned a project that included technology she had never seen before. Much of it was proprietary, and there was no documentation to reference. The person who had been previously working on it had left the company some time before. Seeing it through required working long hours of overtime for months. She tracked down the former employee, who agreed to meet with her and answer her questions in order to gain the knowledge she needed.

Needless to say, she stuck it out, completed the project and did it well. She was the one I recommended for the job, and she has excelled at it. Yes, she had technical experience, but it was her drive that made her a standout. Technical knowledge can be taught. Passion and drive cannot.

Do many companies look for (and need!) experienced DBAs? Yes, of course. Finding the company who is willing to teach a new DBA can really be the lottery ticket. You could easily find that you need to start in a related field, forge a relationship with a DBA on site who is willing to teach you, and wait for your big chance. You may have to start at the low end of the salary scale to get your foot in the door and earn your experience. If you are persistent – and lucky – you will arrive at the time where you perk someone’s interest enough to have a chat about giving you your big break. And that is where the interview comes in.

#career #database administration #homepage #sql prompt #sql

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Ace Your Technical Interviews with These GitHub Repositories

Leverage these repositories to ace your next technical and coding interviews

Getting past the technical and coding interview is not always an easy task for most people.

Lucky for you, there are some amazing resources to help you go through easily and grab that position.

In this article, we will go through some of the best GitHub repositories to help you smash the coding interview.

These collections of repositories are essential in highlighting the different arears to focus on and different topics and questions to expect.

Front-end Developer Interview Questions

This repository is everything that entails frontend development.

Covered content includes:

• General Questions
• HTML Questions
• CSS Questions
• JS Questions
• Accessibility Questions (external link)
• Testing Questions
• Performance Questions
• Network Questions
• Coding Questions

#coding-interviews #technical-interview-tips #programming-interviews #interview-preparation #interview

Vue.js Interview Challenges

Frontend interviews are not the easiest. How should you prepare? Where should you start? These are some common questions that anyone who is beginning interview preparation has.

This series is a guide for those preparing for frontend interviews that includes Vue.js framework.

It is not for complete newbies, it assumes you are familiar with the fundamentals of JavaScript and Vue.js. The series prepares you to take baby steps towards Vue.js interview preparation by focusing on the most fundamental concepts of the framework that interviewers expect candidates to know. The course does not test data structures or algorithms. It focuses on framework concepts only.

#interview-questions #interview-preparation #interview #vuejs #interview-tips #programming

Top 130 Android Interview Questions - Crack Technical Interview Now!

Android Interview Questions and Answers from Beginner to Advanced level

DataFlair is committed to provide you all the resources to make you an android professional. We started with android tutorials along with practicals, then we published Real-time android projects along with source code. Now, we come up with frequently asked android interview questions, which will help you in showing expertise in your next interview.

Android Interview Questions – Get ready for your next interview

Android – one of the hottest technologies, which is having a bright future. Get ready to crack your next interview with the following android interview questions. These interview questions start with basic and cover deep concepts along with advanced topics.

Android Interview Questions for Freshers

1. What is Android?

Android is an open-source mobile operating system that is based on the modified versions of Linux kernel. Though it was mainly designed for smartphones, now it is being used for Tablets, Televisions, Smartwatches, and other Android wearables.

2. Who is the inventor of Android Technology?

The inventors of Android Technology are- Andry Rubin, Nick Sears, and Rich Miner.

3. What is the latest version of Android?

The latest version of Android is Android 10.0, known as Android Q. The upcoming major Android release is Android 11, which is the 18th version of Android. [Note: Keep checking the versions, it is as of June 2020.]

4. How many Android versions can you recall right now?

Till now, there are 17 versions of Android, which have their names in alphabetical order. The 18th version of Android is also going to come later this year. The versions of Android are here:

• Android 1.0 – Its release is 23 September 2008.
• Android 1.1 – Its release date is 9 February 2009.
• Android 1.5 – Its name is Cupcake, Released on 27 April 2009.
• Android 1.6 – Its name is Donut, Released on 15 September 2009.
• Android 2.0 – Its name is Eclair, Released on 26 October 2009
• Android 2.2 – Its name is Froyo, Released on 20 May 2010.
• Android 2.3 – Its name is Gingerbread, Released on 06 December 2010.
• Android 3.0 – Its name is Honeycomb, Released on 22 February 2011.
• Android 4.0 – Its name is Ice Cream Sandwich, Released on 18 October 2011.
• Android 4.1 – Its name is Jelly Bean, Released on 9 July 2012.
• Android 4.4 – Its name is KitKat, Released on 31 October 2013.
• Android 5.0 – Its name is Lollipop, Released on 12 November 2014.
• Android 6.0 – Its name is Marshmallow, Released on 5 October 2015.
• Android 7.0 – Its name is Nougat, Released on 22 August 2016.
• Android 8.0 – Its name is Oreo, Released on 21 August 2017.
• Android 9.0 – Its name is Pie, Released on 6 August 2018.
• Android 10.0 – Its name is Android Q, Released on 3 September 2019.
• Android 11.0 – As of now, it is Android 11.

5. Explain the Android Architecture with its components.

This is a popular android developer interview question

Android Architecture consists of 5 components that are-

a. Linux Kernel: It is the foundation of the Android Architecture that resides at the lowest level. It provides the level of abstraction for hardware devices and upper layer components. Linux Kernel also provides various important hardware drivers that act as software interfaces for hardwares like camera, bluetooth, etc.

b. Native Libraries: These are the libraries for Android that are written in C/C++. These libraries are useful to build many core services like ART and HAL. It provides support for core features.

c. Android Runtime: It is an Android Runtime Environment. Android Operating System uses it during the execution of the app. It performs the translation of the application bytecode into the native instructions. The runtime environment of the device then executes these native instructions.

d. Application Framework: Application Framework provides many java classes and interfaces for app development. And it also provides various high-level services. This complete Application framework makes use of Java.

e. Applications: This is the topmost layer of Android Architecture. It provides applications for the end-user, so they can use the android device and compute the tasks.

6. What are the services that the Application framework provides?

The Android application framework has the following key services-

a. Activity Manager: It uses testing and debugging methods.

b. Content provider: It provides the data from application to other layers.

c. Resource Manager: This provides users access to resources.

d. Notification Manager: This gives notification to the users regarding actions taking place in the background.

e. View System: It is the base class for widgets, and it is also responsible for event handling.

7. What are the important features of Linux Kernel?

The important features of the Linux Kernel are as follows:

a. Power Management: Linux Kernel does power management to enhance and improve the battery life of the device.

b. Memory Management: It is useful for the maximum utilization of the available memory of the device.

c. Device Management: It includes managing all the hardware device drivers. It maximizes the utilization of the available resources.

d. Security: It ensures that no application has any such permission that it affects any other application in order to maintain security.

e. Multi-tasking: Multi-tasking provides the users the ease of doing multiple tasks at the same time.

8. What are the building blocks of an Android Application?

This is a popular android interview question for freshers.

The main components of any Android application are- Activity, Services, Content Provider, and Broadcast Receiver. You can understand them as follows:

a. Activity- It is a class that acts as the entry point representing a single screen to the user. It is like a window to show the user interface.

b. Services- Services are the longest-running component that runs in the background.

c. Content Provider- The content provider is an essential component that allows apps to share data between themselves.

d. Broadcast receivers- Broadcast receiver is another most crucial application component. It helps the apps to receive and respond to broadcast messages from the system or some other application.

9. What are the important components of Android Application?

The Components of Android application are listed below:

1. Widgets
2. Intents
3. Views
4. Notification
5. Fragments
6. Layout XML files
7. Resources

10. What are the widgets?

Widgets are the variations of Broadcast receivers. They are an important part of home screen customization. They often display some data and also allow users to perform actions on them. Mostly they display the app icon on the screen.

11. Can you name some types of widgets?

Mentioned below are the types of widgets-

a. Informative Widgets: These widgets show some important information. Like, the clock widget or a weather widget.

b. Collective Widgets: They are the collection of some types of elements. For example, a music widget that lets us change, skip, or forward the song.

c. Control Widgets: These widgets help us control the actions within the application through it. Like an email widget that helps check the recent mails.

d. Hybrid Widgets: Hybrid widgets are those that consist of at least two or more types of widgets.

12. What are Intents?

Intents are an important part of Android Applications. They enable communication between components of the same application as well as separate applications. The Intent signals the Android system about a certain event that has occurred.

13. Explain the types of intents briefly?

Intent is of three types that are-

a. Implicit Intents: Implicit intents are those in which there is no description of the component name but only the action.

b. Explicit Intents: In explicit intents, the target component is present by declaring the name of the component.

c. Pending Intents: These are those intents that act as a shield over the Intent objects. It covers the intent objects and grants permission to the external app components to access them.

14. What is a View?

A view is an important building block that helps in designing the user interface of the application. It can be a rectangular box or a circular shape, for example, Text View, Edit Text, Buttons, etc. Views occupy a certain area of the screen, and it is also responsible for event handling. A view is the superclass of all the graphical user interface components.

15. What do you understand by View Group?

It is the subclass of the ViewClass. It gives an invisible container to hold layouts or views. You can understand view groups as special views that are capable of holding other views, that are Child View.

16. What do you understand about Shared Preferences?

It is a simple mechanism for data storage in Android. In this, there is no need to create files, and using APIs, it stores the data in XML files. It stores the data in the pair of key-values. SharedPreferences class lets the user save the values and retrieve them when required. Using SharedPreferences we can save primitive data like- boolean, float, integer, string and long.

17. What is a Notification?

A notification is just like a message that shows up outside the Application UI to provide reminders to the users. They remind the user about a message received, or some other timely information from the app.

18. Give names of Notification types.

There are three types of notifications namely-

a. Toast Notification- This notification is the one that fades away sometime after it pops up.

b. Status Notification- This notification stays till the user takes some action on it.

c. Dialog Notification- This notification is the result of an Active Activity.

19. What are fragments?

A fragment is a part of the complete user interface. These are present in Activity, and an activity can have one or more fragments at the same time. We can reuse a fragment in multiple activities as well.

20. What are the types of fragments?

There are three types of fragments that are: Single Fragment, List Fragment, Fragment Transactions.

1. Single Transactions can only show a single view for the user.
2. List Fragments have a special list view feature that provides a list from which the user can select one.
3. Fragment Transactions are helpful for the transition between one fragment to the other.

Frequently asked Android Interview Questions and Answers

21. What are Layout XML files?

Layout XML files contain the structure for the user interface of the application. The XML file also contains various different layouts and views, and they also specify various GUI components that are there in Activity or fragments.

22. What are Resources in Android Application?

The resources in Android Apps defines images, texts, strings, colors, etc. Everything in resources directory is referenced in the source code of the app so that we can use them.

23. Can you develop Android Apps with languages other than Java? If so, name some.

Yes, there are many languages that we can work with, for the development of Android Applications. To name some, I would say Java, Python, C, C++, Kotlin, C#, Corona/LUA.

24. What are the states of the Activity Lifecycle?

Activity lifecycle has the following four stages-

a. Running State: As soon as the activity starts, it is the first state.

b. Paused State: When some other activity starts without closing the previous one, the running activity turns into the Paused state.

c. Resume State: When the activity opens again after being in pause state, it comes into the Resume State.

d. Stopped State: When the user closes the application or stops using it, the activity goes to the Stopped state.

25. What are some methods of Activity?

The methods of Activity are as follows:

• onCreate()
• onStart()
• onPause()
• onRestart()
• onResume()
• onStop()
• onDestroy()

26. How can you launch an activity in Android?

We launch an activity using Intents. For this we need to use intent as follows:

1. ntent intent_name= new Intent(this, Activity_name.class);
2. startActivity(intent_name);

27. What is the service lifecycle?

There are two states of a service that are-

a. Started State: This is when the service starts its execution. A Services come in start state only through the startService() method.

b. Bounded State: A service is in the bounded state when it calls the method bindService().

28. What are some methods of Services?

The methods of service are as follows-

• onStartCommand()
• onBind()
• onCreate()
• onUnbind()
• onDestroy()
• onRebind()

29. What are the types of Broadcast?

Broadcasts are of two types that are-

a. Ordered Broadcast: Ordered broadcasts are Synchronous and work in a proper order. It decides the order by using the priority assigned to the broadcasts.

b. Normal Broadcast: These are asynchronous and unordered. They are more efficient as they run unorderly and all at once. But, they lack full utilization of the results.

30. What are useful impotent folders in Android?

The impotent folders in an Android application are-

1. build.xml- It is responsible for the build of Android applications.
2. bin/ – The bin folder works as a staging area to wrap the files packages into the APK.
3. src/ – The src is a folder where all the source files of the project are present.
4. res/ – The res is the resource folder that stores values of the resources that are used in the application. These resources can be colors, styles, strings, dimensions, etc.
5. assets/ – It provides a facility to include files like text, XML, fonts, music, and video in the Android application.

31. What are the important files for Android Application when working on Android Studio?

This is an important android studio interview question

There are following three files that we need to work on for an application to work-

a. The AndroidManifest.xml file: It has all the information about the application.

b. The MainActivity.java file: It is the app file that actually gets converted to the dalvik executable and runs the application. It is written in java.

c. The Activity_main.xml file: It is the layout file that is available in the res/layout directory. It is another mostly used file while developing the application.

32. Which database do you use for Android Application development?

The database that we use for Android Applications is SQLite. It is because SQLite is lightweight and specially developed for Android Apps. SQLite works the same way as SQL using the same commands.

33. Tell us some features of Android OS.

The best features of Android include-

1. Multi-tasking
2. Support for a great range of languages
3. Support for split-screen
4. High connectivity with 5G support
5. Motion Control

34. Why did you learn Android development?

Learning Android Studio is a good idea because of the following-

1. It has a low application development cost.
2. It is an open-source platform.
3. It has multi-platform support as well as Multi-carrier support.
4. It is open for customizations.
5. Android is a largely used operating system throughout the world.

35. What are the different ways of storage supported in Android?

The various storage ways supported in Android are as follows:

1. Shared Preference
2. Internal Storage
3. External Storage
4. SQLite Databases
5. Network Connection

36. What are layouts?

Layout is nothing but arrangements of elements on the device screen. These elements can be images, tests, videos, anything. They basically define the structure of the Android user interface to make it user friendly.

37. How many layout types are there?

The type of layouts used in Android Apps are as follows:

1. Linear Layout
2. Relative Layout
3. Constraint Layout
4. Table Layout
5. Frame Layout
6. Absolute Layout
7. Scrollview layout

38. What is an APK?

An APK stands for Android Package that is a file format of Android Applications. Android OS uses this package for the distribution and installation of the Android Application.

39. What is an Android Manifest file?

The manifest file describes all the essential information about the project application for build tools, Android operating system, and google play. This file is a must for every Android project that we develop, and it is present in the root of the project source set.

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Vue.js Interview Challenge  — Debounced Search

Problem statement

You were asked to implement a search input that will filter an existing dataset.

You finished the task and is was working fine, but the requirements changed and we will use the API instead of a fixed list now. Unfortunately, the API is not ready yet, but you were asked to proceed with mocked data and prepare the solution.

Requirements:

• prevent the API calls being triggered every time the user changes the input
• show “Searching…” while user is typing
• when the input value did not changed to 1 second assume that the user finished typing and show the results (use the existing data for now, you will make an API call in the future in that place)

#interview-tips #interview #interview-preparation #vuejs #interview-questions #vue

Vue.js Interview Challenge — List of Wonders

Problem statement

In this challenge, you created a list of List of wonders of the Ancient World. When user hovers over an item on the list, a tooltip with a beautiful rainbow symbolising that it was a true wonder should appear. You used mouseover and mouseleave events to toggle hover property that is responsible for showing/hiding the tooltip.

After creating the list you realised that putting all that <li> elements in your html was not very clean and you decided to create a reusable component for the list item.

#interview-preparation #interview-tips #interview-questions #vuejs #interview #vue