Lee Crain (10/31/2012)
Jeff Moden (10/29/2012)For all those who would use such a thing... Caveat Emptor!
And while you're studying such canned answers, be advised that a lot of us don't ask canned questions on interviews especially for senior positions.
As correct as your response is, and I agree with it completely, the reality for many DBA position interviews is that they often begin with interviewers' pet questions about obscure facts and/or T-SQL coding examples. My experiences are that challenging interviewers as to why they think that some bit of trivia is important and/or useful usually backfires. They don't appreciate being asked to explain themselves.
So, for dealing with reality, no matter how inappropriate it is, it doesn't hurt to try to be prepared for the inane questions that some interviewers think are important.
I must be dealing with a different subset of interviewers than you are. I've never yet had that kind of question.
Number of columns per table? That's trivia. Given the very meaning of "trivia", it's impossible for anyone to anticipate every piece of trivia that someone else might ask. One of the key laws of human interaction is always, always, always, "Everyone you meet knows things you don't." There's reciprocity for that, of course, in that you know things nobody else does.
Theoretically, if I am ever asked that kind of question, I'd be inclined to answer something like, "I know there is an upper limit, but a properly normalized database should never approach that limit. If it ever does matter, I can look it up, but it's not something that's ever mattered to me yet."
(Note, last time I was job hunting, I got 6 offers in 6 interviews, in 1 week. All at or above my asking salary, which was already higher than average for the market I'm in. Just to point out that my way of handling interview questions seems to work for me.)
When I do the other side of it, if I ever asked such a "how many" type question, it would be a stress test more than a valid question. I'd probably ask something like, "How many flux capacitors does it take to implement a non-boolean Where clause in a semi-deterministic function?"
Edit: Forgot to include the answer to the flux capacitors question. It's obviously 42, as everyone knows.
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