The question is 'what's the worst' not 'what
disasters have you experienced'.
If you've not had a disaster, feel lucky. But
in DBA terms, one year of experience is practically nothing (especially as most
of that time will almost certainly be 'shadowed' by a more senior DBA).
Golden Note : You say the truth "Nothing" and the interviewer will think you are just there to bring coffees and update your facebook profile during the whole day!
The Question is a trap and it's not easy to
answer. It will measure how you handle pressure, how you take responsibilities,
how fast you can react.
I do not recommend you to create a fictional
story. I believe honesty is golden. On the other hand, if you said
"nothing", in the rest of your interview, you should point your
strengths about these areas. You may talk about how you worked under pressure,
how you fixed problems in a timely-manner,
etc.
I would have thought that the worst possible
case is database toast due to a media failure with multiple backup failures
resulting in an inability to recover the database from any means at all. A
long-running logical corruption would be probably my second 'choice', though...
As you reach higher, get deeper knowledge
there are chances that you may blunder in your job and db may be completely
lost for ever, but at that level there are chances you will meet those fellows
who have also encountered the same scene and may resolve the issue.
A
person who is having 1 or 2 year experience can't damage the db at that level
which cann't be recovered, even due to his ignorance because ignorance and
intention can be judged. What he/she can
blunder something dropped table, wrong comited data; something which can be
recovered by either backup or simply re-installation of software on the cost of
some data loss.
While at higher level, DBA may use underscore
parameter, some block level investigation, some misconfiguration with
dictionary objects which may means ORA-600, 4031 and now Only Oracle Support is
the way to get back db.
Last Thing :
The worse case is dealing with an unknown
problem - where Metalink and Google do not turn up a single reference or hint
as to what the cause is. And then, after a lot sweat and effort and frustration
discovering the problem lower down, in the o/s, hardware, storage system, or
network infrastructure.
Pro Tip :
Problems are good teachers. So why not create
your own using a test instance? There's a lot you can play with, destroy and
try to fix, using your own test instance. Kind of like training hard and fighting
easy (an old infantry motto) - rather pick up practical skills and knowledge
like that.
Just try to understand the basics and the
importance of features...learn as much as possible and try to test....scratch,
build..... This experience gives your idea to answer such type of questions.
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