Minute By Minute

Or every two minutes in this case. It's 11:00 and you're taking an early lunch. Jump in the car and race a few miles down the road to your interview. Allowing for traffic, you arrive early, 10 minutes to spare.

Shut off the engine, check your appearance in the mirror, and sit back for a minute and flip through your copy of Two Minute SQL Stumpers. Here's a good one:

What's the most likely reason for receiving the following error when signing in with the sa account?

Login failed - User: Reason: Not defined as a valid user of a trusted connection

An easy one, but do you know the answer? Lots of stuff might come to mind, but you see one of the answers is "SQL Server is set to Windows Authentication only" and turn the page. You're right and it's one little bit of knowledge you refreshed in your mind.

Interviewing is nerve racking. It's a pressure compressed situation where you have to sell yourself, your skills, your abilities, your personality, and you have to hope the person on the other side of the desk buys it. There may not be a second chance.

If you're sitting there and someone asks you why a developer can't log onto the dev SQL Server even though he has the right name and password, what do you say? Do you double check the password? Do you check if the server's running? All good answers, but checking the mode of authentication might be a great answer. You haven't given an answer that's generic, one that applies to DB2 or Oracle. You've given a SQL Server answer and shown you know about the product and about it's security mechanism.

These are the types of knowledge that we've assembled into a book. SQL Server specific knowledge, not geared to help you pass some exam, although it will help, but issues, knowledge, useful bits of trivia from the real world! And not some large 10 pound book that weighs you down, drooping one shoulder. This is a small, easy to carry and read book. The size of a small paperback novel, thin enough to fit in a purse or a suit jacket pocket. Just the thing to peruse as you sit waiting to be called into an interview. You can download a sample here.

We've made this available for only US$15 + shipping! A bargain for knowledge that you might pay $30 or more for in an Exam prep book. And then what do you do? Ask to take an exam in an interview?

Pick up your copy and keep it handy. It also works the other way, use it to try and stump a few interviewees to see if they know more than what's covered in their last boot camp! Do you think they know why that extra 8GB of RAM isn't being used?