Jeff Moden (7/7/2014)
I hate questions like that. Anyone that has interviewed for more than a couple of times can easily make something "glorious" up and get away with the lie because there's no way for the interviewer to verify a plausible but totally fictional story.
I don't completely agree. I like to ask open-ended questions. I want to see people think through things in front of me and then explain to me what they're thinking through. Now, I don't think this question is sufficiently open-ended, but it's moving in the right direction.
The other problem with such a question is that if you really are a good DBA, then you should not have had any "critical" problems to begin with. 😉
Then I suck.
Shifting gears a bit... Considering how many people beg for urgent help on this and other forums because someone dropped a table and they don't have any backups, I'd have to say that the number of "DBAs" that have never done a restore (or backup, for that matter) far outweighs those that have.
DING DING DING! We have a winner on the internet today. Absolutely. I think it's a horror that there are so many databases out there with zero ability to recover from the slightest problem, let alone something catastrophic.
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- Theodore Roosevelt
Author of:
SQL Server Execution Plans
SQL Server Query Performance Tuning