Interview questions for DBA

By admin | August 2, 2005

1. How many memory layers are in the shared pool?

2. How do you find out from the RMAN catalog if a particular archive log has been backed-up?
3. 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?
4. Define the SGA and how you would configure SGA for a mid-sized OLTP environment? What is
involved in tuning the SGA?
5. What is the cache hit ratio, what impact does it have on performance of an Oracle database and
what is involved in tuning it?
6. 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?
7. How do you tell what your machine name is and what is its IP address?
8. How would you go about verifying the network name that the local_listener is currently using?
9. You have 4 instances running on the same UNIX box. How can you determine which shared
memory and semaphores are associated with which instance?
10. What view(s) do you use to associate a user’s SQLPLUS session with his o/s process?
11. What is the recommended interval at which to run statspack snapshots, and why?
12. 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?
13. 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.
14. How would you edit your CRONTAB to schedule the running of /test/test.sh to run every other day
at 2PM?
15. What do the 9i dbms_standard.sql_txt() and dbms_standard.sql_text() procedures do?
16. In which dictionary table or view would you look to determine at which time a snapshot or MVIEW
last successfully refreshed?
17. How would you best determine why your MVIEW couldn’t FAST REFRESH?
18. How does propagation differ between Advanced Replication and Snapshot Replication (read-only)?
19. Which dictionary view(s) would you first look at to understand or get a high-level idea of a given
Advanced Replication environment?
20. How would you begin to troubleshoot an ORA-3113 error?
21. Which dictionary tables and/or views would you look at to diagnose a locking issue?
22. An automatic job running via DBMS_JOB has failed. Knowing only that “it’s failed’, how do you
approach troubleshooting this issue?
23. How would you extract DDL of a table without using a GUI tool?
24. You’re getting high “busy buffer waits’ - how can you find what’s causing it?
25. What query tells you how much space a tablespace named “test’ is taking up, and how much space
is remaining?
26. Database is hung. Old and new user connections alike hang on impact. What do you do? Your SYS
SQLPLUS session IS able to connect.
27. 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.
 28. Illustrate how to determine the amount of physical CPUs a Unix Box possesses (LINUX and/or
Solaris).
29. How do you increase the OS limitation for open files (LINUX and/or Solaris)?
30. 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.
31. Explain how you would restore a database using RMAN to Point in Time?
32. How does Oracle guarantee data integrity of data changes?
33. Which environment variables are absolutely critical in order to run the OUI?
34. What SQL query from v$session can you run to show how many sessions are logged in as a
particular user account?
35. Why does Oracle not permit the use of PCTUSED with indexes?
36. What would you use to improve performance on an insert statement that places millions of rows
into that table?
37. What would you do with an “in-doubt” distributed transaction?
38. What are the commands you’d issue to show the explain plan for “select * from dual’?
39. In what script is “snap$” created? In what script is the “scott/tiger” schema created?
40. 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?
41. How would you configure your networking files to connect to a database by the name of DSS which
resides in domain icallinc.com?
42. 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?
43. 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?
44. Explain the concept of the DUAL table.
45. What are the ways tablespaces can be managed and how do they differ?
46. From the database level, how can you tell under which time zone a database is operating?
47. What’s the benefit of “dbms_stats” over “analyze”?
48. Typically, where is the conventional directory structure chosen for Oracle binaries to reside?
49. 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?
50. How do you recover a datafile that has not been physically been backed up since its creation and
has been deleted. Provide syntax example.

What are things which play major role in designing the backup strategy?
What are RTO, MTBF, and MTTR?
What are the various tape backup solutions available in the market?
What is RAID? What is RAID0? What is RAID1? What is RAID 10?
What is the difference between physical and logical backups?
What is hot backup and what is cold backup?
When do you recommend hot backup? What are the pre-reqs?
How do you generate the begin backup script?
Give me the steps for recovering the full database from cold backup?
Give me the steps for TIME based recovery from the full database from hot backup. ?
Give me the steps for SCN based recovery from the full database from hot backup. ?
Give me the steps for CANCEL based recovery from the full database from hot backup. ?
Give me the steps for recovery with missing archived redo logs?
Give me the steps for recovery with missing online redo logs?
Give me the steps for recovery of missing data file?
Give me the steps for physical standby database creation?
What is db_recovery_file_dest ? When do you need to set this value ?
Give me the steps to perform the point in time recovery with a backup which is taken before
the resetlogs of the db ?
Tell me about the steps required to enable the RMAN backup for a target database ?
What is the difference between obsolete RMAN backups and expired RMAN backups ?
What is recovery catalog ? Why do you need this ?
How do you install the RMAN recovery catalog ?
Can you skip specific tables when using RMAN DUPLICATE feature ?
What is FRA ? When do you use this ?
How do you clone the database using RMAN software ? Give me the brief steps ? when do
you use crosscheck command ?
How do you setup the RMAN tape backups ?
How do you identify the expired,active,obsolete backups ? Which RMAN command you use ?

What is channel ? How do you enable the parallel backups with RMAN ?
What is auxiliary channel in RMAN? When do you need this ?
How do you identify what are the all the target databases that are being backed-up with
RMAN database ?
Give me some of the RMAN catalog view names which contains the catalog information ?
What is oracle wallet ? Tell me about the encryption options available with RMAN ?
List atleast 6 advantages of RMAN backups compare to traditional hot backups ?
How do you identikit the block corruption in RMAN database ? How do you fix this ?
How do you verify the integrity of the image copy in RMAN environment ?
How do you enable the encryption for RMAN backups ?
What is backup set ?
What is the difference between cumulative incremental and differential incremental backups
?
How do you enable the autobackup for the controlfile using RMAN ?
What is configure command ? When do you use this ?
Give me the steps for setting up the physical stand by database with RMAN ?
Give me the steps for changing the DBID in a cloned environment ?
What is the significance of incarnation and DBID in the RMAN backups ?
What are the steps which needs to be performed in $ORACLE_HOME for enabling the RMAN
backups with netbackup or TSM tape library software ?

RMAN is an Oracle tool for taking the backup and recovering the databases. You can copy, restore,
and recover datafiles, control files and archived redo logs. It has command line utility as well as GUI-
based Enterprise Manager Backup. Here we are discussing the command line utility.

For example, we have TEST and PROD databases. Here TEST is the catalog database and PROD is the
target database for which the backup has to be taken. You may loose your backup if you have your
catalog and target databases on the same box and the box crashes .So it is always advisable to keep
a separate database for RMAN catalog .

Create two databases. One for RMAN catalog(Test) and one target(PROD). Both the Databases should
be archive log mode.

In catalog database (test)

create a tablespace 'CATALOG'

create a user rman/rman and give the connect , resource, recovery_catalog_owner

Also give unlimited quota on CATALOG tablespace.

Create recovery catalog

c:\rman catalog rman/rman@test log = create_rmanlog.log

Recovery Manager: Release 8.1.7.0.0 - Production

RMAN-06008: connected to recovery catalog database

RMAN-06428: recovery catalog is not installed
RMAN>

RMAN> create catalog tablespace 'RCVCAT';

RMAN> create catalog tablespace 'CATALOG';

RMAN-06431: recovery catalog created
RMAN>

Register the database.

c:\>rman catalog rman/rman@test target internal/oracle@prod

Recovery Manager: Release 8.1.7.0.0 - Production

RMAN-06005: connected to target database: PROD (DBID=4145212838)
RMAN-06008: connected to recovery catalog database

RMAN> register database;

RMAN-03022: compiling command: register

RMAN-03023: executing command: register
RMAN-08006: database registered in recovery catalog
RMAN-03023: executing command: full resync
RMAN-08002: starting full resync of recovery catalog
RMAN-08004: full resync complete
Backup the datafile

RMAN> run{
Allocate channel c1 type disk;
Backup datafile ‘c:\orawin_815\oradata\prod\system01.dbf’ format ‘c:\backup\temp01.dbf’;
}

You can change the backup fine format including the destination. In this example, this backup file is
created on the local drive of the system.

11g Release 2 Installation on Suse and Enterprise Linux 5

Introduction

This articles covers the Installation of Oracle Database

11g Release 2 on Enterprise Linux 5 and Suse 11.

Oracle 11g Release 2 launched in August 2009. Now, the product is available on Linux platform. There are
almost 400 aditional functionality added by Oracle 11g. After watching the Oracle webcast 11g Release 2, I feel
Oracle 11g Release more focus on High Availability(easy RAC installation and implementation),Compressing
Data,Security,etc.

11g Release 2 required minimum 1gb RAM for the installation. I would recommend minimum 4gb ram will be
ideally better. Swap should have double of physical ram.

I recommend the following Server Configuration:

Intel Xeon Processor W5580

3.20ghz

L3 8mb Cache

1 Quad Core

4 to 8gb Ram (an ideal configuration) .

146gb HDD (default) - This configuration can be changed, based on various factors.

The following packages is mandatory for Enterprise Linux : GNOME Desktop Environment ,Graphical Internet, X
Window System ,Editors , Development Tools ,Server Configuration Tools,System Tools and Administration
Tools.

You can download the software, subject to Oracle Licensing.

http://www.oracle.com/technology/software/products/database/index.html

Standard Edition One – support upto 2 cpu

Standard Edition – support upot 4 cpu
Enterprise Edition(11.2.0.1.0)– unlimited.
Linux x86 | Disk 1, Disk 2 (2.1 GB)
Set the Linux Kernal Parameters:

Linux Kernel Parameters

What is the Shared Memory ( reference with various linux/unix sites for these parameters.):
The shared memory will hve huge impact on Oracle Performance
. So very carefully to be handled.
Shared memory allows processes to access common structures and data by placing them in shared memory
segments. It's the fastest form of IPC (Interprocess Communication) available since no kernel involvement
occurs when data is passed between the processes.
Oracle uses shared memory segments for the SGA (Shared Global Area) which is an area of memory that is
shared by all Oracle background and foreground processes.

Setting SHMMAX Parameter

This parameter defines the maximum size in bytes for a shared memory segment. Since the SGA is comprised
of shared memory, SHMMAX can potentially limit the size of the SGA.

Setting SHMMNI Parameter

This parameter sets the maximum number of shared memory segments system wide.

Setting SHMALL Parameter

This parameter sets the total amount of shared memory in bytes that can be used at one time on the system.

The SEMMSL Parameter

This parameter defines the maximum number of semaphores per semaphore set.
Oracle recommends to set SEMMSL to the largest PROCESSES init.ora parameter of any database on the Linux
system.

The SEMMNI Parameter

This parameter defines the maximum number of semaphore sets in the entire Linux system.

The SEMMNS Parameter

This parameter defines the total number of semaphores (not semaphore set) in the entire Linux system.

The SEMOPM Parameter

This parameter defines the maximum number of semaphore operations that can be performed per semop(2)
system call.

Setting File Handles

The maximum number of file handles denotes the maximum number of open files that you can have on the
Linux system.

Setting System Wide Limit for File Handles

The value in /proc/sys/fs/file-max sets the maximum number of file handles or open files that the Linux kernel
will allocate. When you get error messages about running out of file handles, then you might want to raise this
limit.
Change the parameters:

Copy sysctl.conf
 cp sysctl.conf sysctl.confold
Cd /etc
Vi sysctl.conf
Add the following:

kernel.shmmax = 2147483648
kernel.shmall = 2097152
kernel.shmmni = 4096
kernel.sem = 250 32000 100 128
fs.file-max = 65536 # 512 * PROCESSES
net.core.rmem_default=4194304
net.core.rmem_max=4194304
net.core.wmem_default=262144
net.core.wmem_max=262144
net.ipv4.ip_local_port_range = 1024 65000
Press Esc :wq

Change the Hosts File Entry

Cd /etc
Cp hosts hostsold
Vi hosts
IP-address Machinename.domainname Hostname
Press Esc and :wq

Go to /etc/security (cd /etc/security)

Vi limits.conf
Add or change /etc/security/limits.conf file:
oracle soft nofile 1024
oracle hard nofile 65536
oracle soft nproc 2047
oracle hard nproc 16384
to save Esc :wq

Go to /etc/pam.d (cd /etc/pam.d)

Vi login
Add or change line to the /etc/pam.d/login file
session required pam_limits.so
session required /lib/security/pam_limits.so
to save Esc :wq

Very important Steps:

On secure linux has to be disabled:

Go to /etc/selinux(cd /etc/selinux)
Vi config
Change or add
SELINUX=disabled
to save Esc :wq

The following packages(rpm) required for Enterprise Linux 5.0 on various cd’s :
Insert the cd and mount the same

Go to cd /media/cdrom/Server (cd /media/cdrom/Server)

(carefully use –force and –nodeps)
rpm -Uvh --force --nodeps binutils-2.17.50.0.6
rpm -Uvh --force --nodeps compat-libstdc++-33-3.2.3
rpm -Uvh --force –nodeps elfutils-libelf-0.125
rpm -Uvh --force –nodeps elfutils-libelf-devel-0.125
rpm -Uvh --force –nodeps elfutils-libelf-devel-static-0.125
rpm -Uvh --force –nodeps gcc-4.1.2
rpm -Uvh --force –nodeps gcc-c++-4.1.2
rpm -Uvh --force –nodeps glibc-2.5-24
rpm -Uvh --force –nodeps glibc-common-2.5
rpm -Uvh --force –nodeps glibc-devel-2.5
rpm -Uvh --force –nodeps glibc-headers-2.5
rpm -Uvh --force –nodeps kernel-headers-2.6.18
rpm -Uvh --force –nodeps ksh-20060214
rpm -Uvh --force –nodeps libaio-0.3.106
rpm -Uvh --force –nodeps libaio-devel-0.3.106
rpm -Uvh --force –nodeps libgcc-4.1.2
rpm -Uvh --force –nodeps libgomp-4.1.2
rpm -Uvh --force –nodeps libstdc++-4.1.2
rpm -Uvh --force –nodeps libstdc++-devel-4.1.2
rpm -Uvh --force –nodeps make-3.81
rpm -Uvh --force --nodeps sysstat-7.0.2
rpm -Uvh --force --nodeps unixODBC-2.2.11
rpm -Uvh --force --nodeps unixODBC-devel-2.2.11
eject or unmount

Linux Enterprise Server 11 - SUSE:

rpm -Uvh --force –nodeps binutils-2.19

rpm -Uvh --force –nodeps gcc-4.3
rpm -Uvh --force –nodeps gcc-c++-4.3
rpm -Uvh --force –nodeps glibc-2.9
rpm -Uvh --force –nodeps glibc-devel-2.9
rpm -Uvh --force –nodeps ksh-93t
rpm -Uvh --force –nodeps libstdc++33-3.3.3
rpm -Uvh --force –nodeps libstdc++43-4.3.3_20081022
rpm -Uvh --force –nodeps libstdc++43-devel-4.3.3_20081022
rpm -Uvh --force –nodeps libaio-0.3.104
rpm -Uvh --force –nodeps libaio-devel-0.3.104
rpm -Uvh --force –nodeps libgcc43-4.3.3_20081022
rpm -Uvh --force –nodeps libstdc++-devel-4.3
rpm -Uvh --force –nodeps make-3.81
rpm -Uvh --force –nodeps sysstat-8.1.5

Create user and groups

Adding Groups
groupadd oinstall
groupadd dba
groupadd asmadmin
Adding user and assign the group:
useradd -g oinstall -G dba,oper,asmadmin oracle
Add password for Oracle user
passwd oracle

I would like to light on the "asmadmin" group is used for ASM.

Make directories in which the Oracle Binary to be installed:

mkdir -p /data1/app/oracle/product/11/db_1
chown -R oracle:oinstall /data1
chmod -R 777 /data1

Shutdown or reboot the machine

Login as Oracle
Change/add user enviroment
Go to /home/oracle
Vi .bash_profile

Add the following:

ORACLE_HOSTNAME=machinename.domainname
ORACLE_BASE=/data1/app/oracle; export ORACLE_BASE
ORACLE_HOME=$ORACLE_BASE/product/11.2/db_1; export ORACLE_HOME
ORACLE_SID=orcl; export ORACLE_SID
ORACLE_TERM=xterm; export ORACLE_TERM
PATH=/usr/sbin:$PATH; export PATH
PATH=$ORACLE_HOME/bin:$PATH; export PATH
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$ORACLE_HOME/lib:/lib:/usr/lib; export LD_LIBRARY_PATH
CLASSPATH=$ORACLE_HOME/JRE:$ORACLE_HOME/jlib:$ORACLE_HOME/rdbms/jlib; export CLASSPATH

if [ $USER = "oracle" ]; then

if [ $SHELL = "/bin/ksh" ]; then
ulimit -p 16384
ulimit -n 65536
else
ulimit -u 16384 -n 65536
fi
fi

Press Esc key :wq

Log out
Login as Oracle user

Run Install Steps:

Set the Display first

export DISPLAY=hostname:0.0
Or
DISPAY=HOSTNAME:0.0
export DISPLAY

Go setup Disk directory

Cd Disk1
./runInstaller
Rest follow the GUI provided by Oracle