Discussion on:

SQL Server database developer interview questions and answers

Some of these questions are not really appropriate for a developer interview. I would not expect a developer to know about DMVs and DBCC commands. In most shops, you would not want a developer performing DBCC tasks on a server. Developers are usually not involved with server administration and thus don't really need to know about the Agent, other than to be aware that it exists.

The problem with relying on stock questions like this for a technical interview is that you will often weed out good people by grilling them on specific tasks that may not even pertain to the job. The people who remain in consideration will likely be those who spend their free time memorizing answers to interview questions, and these people generally make horrible employees. Good employees spend time performing useful work and thus don't have a lot of extra time to memorize trivia.

Unless the particular skill or technology is truly necessary for the job you are interviewing for, don't have it on your list of requirements and don't expect all applicants to know it.

will be on the DBMS, then I'd say if you could get someone who can answer all of them and understand what the answers mean, then tech wise you are on a winner.

Thing is development jobs like that aren't that common. Usual devloper jobs SQL will get to 20%, if there's heavy use of ORMs it could get be zero.

So anyone out there who wants to use this list as a measureof suitability for a role, shouldn't have to go beyond basic admin scripting in terms of programming, otherwise you'll be looking for somone who could get a pass on the previous C# quiz (or equivalent in an other programming language) and this one, and rest assured that's not common.

I would expect any DBA that worked for me to know almost all of these, as I did. Even a developmental DBA.

IMHO very few of these questions would help you recruit the best candidate for the role.

When I've sat on an interview panel as the technical representative (along with someone from HR and someone from management) I've always concentrated on the "why" of the technology, above the "what". A candidate with a good memory will be able to recite BOL entries for CTE, View, DBCC etc But only candidates who have actually *used* them would be able to tell you why you would want to; what problem was it that caused Microsoft to spend time building it into SQL Server.

For example, after hearing the reply to the question "what is a CTE?" follow up with "under what circumstances would it be better to use a CTE over a subquery?"

The answer to the second question would be more helpful in separating wheat from chaff.

Developer aren't suppose to know every detail specification of the system they use, right ?
you need to know types of variables, but do you need to know the exact different between a single, a double and a decimal ? (not in bytes but in number )