From my 5 years experience, what I have realised is that it's not necessarily about whether they know the language in use, in this case T-SQL, but whether they know the theory behind relational databases. Just like someone could know Java very well doesn't necessarily mean that they know and apply the correct concept of OO programming. Similarly I think a big part of SQL is to have an understanding of the relational data model and then any SQL language/tool, which could be T-SQL, PostgreSQL, MySQL etc , can be used to apply that theory. But you are right, there needs to be some way of grading from which you can tell what level someone is at, novice, intermediate or expert. In my view a novice should be able to

*Perform basic querying such as select, insert, update and delete on single tables.

*Create tables (with PKs and FKs), views and procedures.

Taqveem