Azure-Sql-Db

This is a post in the SQL Interview series. These aren’t trick or gotcha questions, they’re just questions designed to scope out a candidate’s knowledge around SQL Server and Azure SQL Database.

Section: Administration Level: Medium

Question:

You are reviewing database settings for a server.

You notice that one database has AUTO_CLOSE configured. Your model database does not have it enabled.

What is the most likely cause for that setting to be enabled, and what effect does enabling it have?

2025-07-07

This is a post in the SQL Interview series. These aren’t trick or gotcha questions, they’re just questions designed to scope out a candidate’s knowledge around SQL Server and Azure SQL Database.

Section: Development Level: Medium

Question:

You are reviewing T-SQL code from an application.

You notice in the definition of some tables, the timestamp data type has been used. In other tables, the rowversion data type has been used for similar purposes.

2025-07-03

This is a post in the SQL Interview series. These aren’t trick or gotcha questions, they’re just questions designed to scope out a candidate’s knowledge around SQL Server and Azure SQL Database.

Section: Development Level: Advanced

Question:

You are reviewing T-SQL code from an application.

You notice that a view includes WITH SCHEMA_BINDING in its declaration.

What does that affect?

Answer:

Adding WITH SCHEMA_BINDING to a view definition ensures that the underlying objects (like tables) cannot be changed while the view exists.

2025-06-29

This is a post in the SQL Interview series. These aren’t trick or gotcha questions, they’re just questions designed to scope out a candidate’s knowledge around SQL Server and Azure SQL Database.

Section: Administration Level: Advanced

Question:

If a SQL Server table has six triggers associated with it, what control do you have over the order that the triggers fire in?

Answer:

SQL Server doesn’t provide an option to control trigger firing order. However, it does provide an option to choose the first trigger to fire, and the last trigger to fire.

2025-06-25

This is a post in the SQL Interview series. These aren’t trick or gotcha questions, they’re just questions designed to scope out a candidate’s knowledge around SQL Server and Azure SQL Database.

Section: Administration Level: Medium

Question:

The CPU of a SQL Server is at 2%. Very little I/O is happening.

A query has been running for a long time, and seems stuck i.e., doesn’t seem to be doing anything, what’s likely to be the issue?

2025-06-21

A few days ago, I wrote about the new Standard Developer Edition of SQL Server 2025 and what good news it was. I noted that the need for it had reduced since SQL Server 2016 SP1 but it was still helpful.

While the product group management did a good job with SQL Server 2016 SP1, others in the product group don’t seem to have remembered those lessons. The team keeps releasing features that only work on particular SKUs of Azure SQL Database.

2025-06-19

This is a post in the SQL Interview series. These aren’t trick or gotcha questions, they’re just questions designed to scope out a candidate’s knowledge around SQL Server and Azure SQL Database.

Section: Development Level: Intro

Question:

You are writing Azure SQL Database code that needs to concatenate strings.

You have previously used the + operator to do this.

Which other operator can be used for concatenating strings?

Answer:

Azure SQL Database supports the double-pipe || operator for string concatenation.

2025-06-17

If you’ve installed the public preview of SQL Server 2025, you will have noticed that the list of free editions that you can install, has increased.

Instead of just Evaluation, Developer, and Express, the list is now as shown above, with Developer split into Standard Developer and Enterprise Developer.

While the naming of the new editions sound like they are describing the person using them, they are about the included features.

2025-06-15

This is a post in the SQL Interview series. These aren’t trick or gotcha questions, they’re just questions designed to scope out a candidate’s knowledge around SQL Server and Azure SQL Database.

Section: Administration Level: Medium

Question:

You have code that uses transactions.

There is an outer transaction that contains an inner transaction.

If the inner transaction code executes a ROLLBACK, what is rolled back? Is it the inner transaction, the outer transaction, or both?

2025-06-13

This is a post in the SQL Interview series. These aren’t trick or gotcha questions, they’re just questions designed to scope out a candidate’s knowledge around SQL Server and Azure SQL Database.

Section: Administrtaion Level: Advanced

Question:

You have deployed a database application into production.

Soon after, you get reports that large numbers of deadlocks are occurring.

What is the most important first step in resolving deadlocks?

Answer:

While it might appear that looking into locking processes, etc. is critical, it is pointless reviewing these until you are certain that queries on the system are running efficiently.

2025-06-09