* Presents an innovative, philosophical approach to Oracle database administration, and shows how to think about the whole complex problem of performance tuning, how to break it down, how to root out the cause of performance bottlenecks. *Covers all practical aspects of Oracle performance tuning. * Filled with hands-on lessons and accounts. * Teaches an innovative and effective "Physician to Magician" approach, showing how to understand the problem, uncover the root cause, and choose and implement the most effective solution.

The questions in this guide have been selected using this framework: (1) Questions should reflect understanding of concepts (2) Questions should reflect actual hands-on experience (3) Questions should not be based on memorization of arcane names or syntax (4) Questions should reflect issues seen by the majority of DBAs of that skill level. The intent of the questions is that most DBAs, for a given skill level, can successfully answer most of the interview questions. Naturally, no one person could be expected to flawlessly answer all of the senior-level questions. Even the most adept DBAs have some areas of weakness. In order to test the fairness of the questions, I asked numerous DBAs, from different backgrounds and companies, to review the questions.