Interviewer Scenario

From an interviewer:
I tend more towards trying to determine if the candidate has honest to goodness real world experience or is it all book knowledge and passed the OCP.

An OCP is good (don't get me wrong) but I'd almost rather considersomeone that has actually "been there done that".

Did an interview for a contractor once. Some pretty tough questions. Inoticed she kept glancing towards a spiral notebook she had carried in.I asked her if the answers I was looking for were in the book.When she told me they were, I told her to find them and answer myquestion.The fact that she had made a note of the problem and the 'fix' told meshe had indeed run in that problem and thought enough about it to makesnotes of the fix.Told her to use her notes the remainder of the interview if she wanted.

I am a firm believer that you don't try to remember everything....you'll never do it ...especially as you get a little further along in age. You just MIGHT remember it incorrectly and cause yourself more pain than gain.Books exist for more than lining your shelves.

As far as the individual not knowing what RAC was/is.....maybe theyhaven't had the 'privilege' of working on 9i yet and their world iscentered still in 8i or even V7. Did they know what OPS was/is?
How often do you REALLY get in to histograms on a daily basis?
I'd much rather a DBA know how to backup and be able to restore and recover a database than give me a stock/pat answer on what a histogramis and how it is used.