| [Job Interview] | |
Best Relational Database Interview Questions--Most consumer-facing web companies these days use one of the major open source databases, either MySQL or PostgreSQL. Explain what database indexes are and how they work. --How do you boost the performance of a database? --What is a join and explain different types of joins. --Explain when and how transactions should be used. --What's the fastest way to get a thousand records into the database? --How can you tell if a query will scale for production? --What's the difference between a primary key and a unique key? Also, it is better to ask the interview candidate to explain specific statements on their resumes. If they say they tuned queries or improved performance, you'd ask how? What they did in specific? What tools they've used, etc. | |
| posted by Jian | |
| comments (1) |
| 1# Jian 2012-01-13 13:22 | |
| For the question of "what's the fastest way to get a thousand records into the database?", I think the answer should be bulk-loading into the database. Typically, databases are implemented using B/B+ trees, there is a HUGE cost to insert one item at at time, since the data structure needs to be adjusted each time. Bulk-loading should pre-allocate enough space, therefore, making it easy to lump all records efficiently into the db. | |
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