Haha, I was sent by a recruiting firm to a first interview that without my knowing was a tech interview. POP QUIZ! It was horribly embarassing especially since my position at the time was using Oracle and not SQL Server and it had been months since I'd been DBA'ing and coding for SQL Server. I think this happens to everyone at some point - the interview from hell. I learned never to trust a recruiter again and to make sure I'd brushed up on the academics prior to each interview and had some concrete examples of what I've done from performance troubleshooting, tricky report requests and upgrade/installation implementation. That way I could show off the stuff that I do know and reassure the interviewers that I had the tech chops.

I know it's hard to determine this in a couple of interviews, but aren't critical thinking skills and being break down a problem to get to a solution more important than giving out a definition of schema binding? If I were you, if wouldn't beat myself up for not being able to do the latter if you can do the former.

MWise