Some more questions for the senior candidate

What do you understand by closure in a relational context?

What transformation rules would you apply to simplify queries and check constraints?

What answer are YOU looking for?

Why is it called relational?

Ask someone if they know why an RDBMS is called relational.

Is no one going to take the bait?

Ask someone if they know why an RDBMS is called relational.

The majority of candidates will give the wrong answer. This doesn't mean they should be rejected - they just need...

In the DBMS; assertions - in the SQL Standard since 1992. They would make the implementation of multi-row and multi-table constraints much easier and much more reliable.

In SSMS the possibility...

As an additional point, lobby Microsoft to implement assertions (in the SQL Standard since 1992) which would eliminate the need for constraints in triggers. I know that the implications for...

The referential and check constraints in SQL don't cover all possible necessary constraints.

Therefore you need to use triggers to enforce these constraints.

The arguments against triggers come from the Oracle camp....

• This reply was modified 4 years, 8 months ago by will 58232.

They answer I gave were correct, but not elegant.

Sometimes there is a difference between the right answer and the right answer for the interview. You have to know both and...

I've found learning about the mathematical background to the relational model very enlightening.

Some programmers and DBA seem to panic when I mention the "M" word, but the mathematics behind the...

And how it is actually stored and transmitted is not at all standard.

Well of course not, the whole point of the relational model is that you don't have to know...

The information_schema is an ansi standard for SQL metadata supported by every DBMS. So the format for representing SQL data is standard.

SQL is not a data format, it's s syntax for querying data.

You have perhaps heard of the DDL part of SQL?

I like no/low code tools, like Power BI and others.

Back on topic!

I am very impressed with what Microsoft have done with Power Query. They've put a lot of thought into...

There is no equivalent for a relational data set.

You have perhaps heard of SQL?

So once again I can say this data will be in JSON format and that is a common format that can be processed by any number of standard interfaces.

The proliferation...