nickmarden · August 22, 2018 05:36 · Dec 6, 2015 · Dec 6, 2015 · Dec 2, 2015 · Dec 2, 2015
diff --git a/database_engineer_skills_test.md b/database_engineer_skills_test.md
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-**PLEASE NOTE: Do not post your answers to this gist**
+**PLEASE NOTE: Do not post your answers to this gist; email them to [email protected] instead**
 
 1. Voting
 ---------

diff --git a/database_engineer_skills_test.md b/database_engineer_skills_test.md
@@ -1,3 +1,5 @@
+**PLEASE NOTE: Do not post your answers to this gist**
+
 1. Voting
 ---------
 

diff --git a/database_engineer_skills_test.md b/database_engineer_skills_test.md
@@ -57,6 +57,7 @@ Discuss the pros and cons of interacting with the client's database using:
 * An SSH session
 * A Remote Desktop/Citrix session
 * A local copy of the database
+* A slimmed-down copy of the database (which does not currently exist)
 
 Also discuss tools that you would use to mitigate any shortcomings of your setup.
 

diff --git a/database_engineer_skills_test.md b/database_engineer_skills_test.md
@@ -16,10 +16,10 @@ The engineers have tracked the problem down to this SQL query:
 
 ```
 -- Most popular user first names
-SELECT first_name, COUNT(*) FROM v_user_address GROUP BY first_name ORDER BY COUNT(*) DESC LIMIT 10
+SELECT first_name, COUNT(*) FROM v_user_locale_info GROUP BY first_name ORDER BY COUNT(*) DESC LIMIT 10
 ```
 
-The definition of the `v_user_address` view is:
+The definition of the `v_user_locale_info` view is:
 
 ```
 SELECT u.first_name

diff --git a/database_engineer_skills_test.md b/database_engineer_skills_test.md
@@ -0,0 +1,72 @@
+1. Voting
+---------
+
+Each voter can vote in zero or more referenda. Each referendum has one or more questions, and each question is a yes/no vote. Write the simplest normalized schema to describe this in generic SQL statements or as an entity-relationship diagram. Point out where the indexes would be if you want to quickly know the results of a given referendum question, but you never expect to query a single voter's voting record.
+
+2. Cursors
+----------
+Explain the difference between explicit and implicit cursors in PL/SQL. Give an example in which an explicit cursor can be used to solve a problem that cannot be solved (or cannot be solved easily) using implicit cursors.
+
+3. Someone Did Something Dumb
+-----------------------------
+
+Some new code hit production and it's performing horribly! The site is all broken.
+
+The engineers have tracked the problem down to this SQL query:
+
+```
+-- Most popular user first names
+SELECT first_name, COUNT(*) FROM v_user_address GROUP BY first_name ORDER BY COUNT(*) DESC LIMIT 10
+```
+
+The definition of the `v_user_address` view is:
+
+```
+SELECT u.first_name
+       , u.last_name
+       , a.street_address1
+       , a.street_address2
+       , a.city
+       , a.postalcode
+       , c.primary_language
+       , l.ltr
+FROM   users u
+       , address a
+       , country c
+       , language l
+WHERE  u.address_id = a.id
+AND    a.country_code = c.code
+AND    l.language_code = c.primary_language_code
+```
+
+What's wrong?
+
+This query worked fine on the staging server. Why is it failing now?
+
+4. Unix tools
+-------------
+
+In one Unix command, find all of the files in `/usr/local` whose contents contain the word "aardvark" (case-insensitive), and list them all in order from most-recently created to least-recently created.
+
+5. Remote Development Environments
+----------------------------------
+
+A client has asked you to solve some problems on their large (1 TB) database located in San Francisco, CA but you live in Indonesia. Your Internet bandwidth is about 1 Mbps, but it is a bit unreliable - especially at night when everyone returns home and starts BitTorrenting their favorite TV shows.
+
+Discuss the pros and cons of interacting with the client's database using:
+* An SSH session
+* A Remote Desktop/Citrix session
+* A local copy of the database
+
+Also discuss tools that you would use to mitigate any shortcomings of your setup.
+
+How does the answer change if your bandwidth is 100 Kbps? 100 MBps?
+
+6. Javascript Form Handling
+---------------------------
+
+Design a simple form that validates a single date input (and includes a submit button). The resulting HTML must be fully-functional, but can reference libraries available on the public Internet.
+
+Discuss how you would integrate such a form into a PHP controller framework. (In fact, your form design may reflect your choice of MVC framework if you would like.)
+
+Is it possible to circumvent the form validation? If so, how? How would you mitigate this vulnerability?