SQL Server Online Test

About the test:

The SQL Server Online test uses scenario-based MCQs to evaluate candidates on their knowledge of SQL Server, including their proficiency in writing complex SQL queries, administering SQL Server instances, and managing data. Additionally, the test assesses a candidate's understanding of SQL Server security, performance optimization, and disaster recovery. The test aims to evaluate a candidate's ability to work with SQL Server effectively and efficiently in various real-world scenarios.

Covered skills:

Transactional and relational Database
Database & Database Objects
Synchronization
Database Monitoring & Maintenance
SQL Server Database Security & Troubleshooting

Configurations
Installation
Transaction Logs
Backup & Recovery
Storage Area Network (SAN)

See all covered skills

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9 reasons why

Adaface SQL Server Online Test is the most accurate way to shortlist SQL Server DBAs

Reason #1

Tests for on-the-job skills

The questions for Senior candidates assess advanced topics like:

Query Optimization: Questions evaluate the candidate's ability to optimize queries using indexing, partitioning, and other techniques. This skill is essential for improving database performance and scalability.
Database Design: Candidates are expected to be proficient in database design, normalization, and schema design. This knowledge is crucial for designing efficient and maintainable databases.
Stored Procedures and Functions: Questions assess the candidate's ability to write efficient and reusable stored procedures and functions. This skill is important for reducing the amount of redundant code and improving database performance.
Transactions and Locking: Candidates are evaluated on their understanding of transactions, isolation levels, and locking mechanisms. This knowledge is essential for ensuring data integrity and avoiding concurrency issues.
Performance Tuning: Questions evaluate the candidate's ability to diagnose and resolve performance issues in SQL Server. This skill is important for ensuring that databases can handle large volumes of data and high user traffic.
High Availability and Disaster Recovery: Candidates are expected to be proficient in configuring high availability and disaster recovery solutions such as clustering, replication, and backup/restore. This knowledge is essential for ensuring that critical databases are always available and protected against data loss.
Security and Compliance: Questions assess the candidate's understanding of SQL Server security features and compliance regulations such as GDPR and HIPAA. This knowledge is important for ensuring that databases are secure and compliant with legal and regulatory requirements.
Business Intelligence: Candidates are evaluated on their ability to design and develop business intelligence solutions using SQL Server tools such as Analysis Services, Integration Services, and Reporting Services. This knowledge is important for providing insights and data-driven decision making.
ETL Processes: Questions evaluate the candidate's ability to design and implement Extract, Transform, Load (ETL) processes using SQL Server Integration Services. This skill is important for integrating data from different sources and transforming it into usable information.
Data Warehousing: Candidates are expected to be proficient in designing and implementing data warehousing solutions using SQL Server tools such as Analysis Services and Integration Services. This knowledge is important for providing a central repository for large amounts of data and enabling data analysis and reporting.

Reason #2

No trick questions

Traditional assessment tools use trick questions and puzzles for the screening, which creates a lot of frustration among candidates about having to go through irrelevant screening assessments.

The main reason we started Adaface is that traditional pre-employment assessment platforms are not a fair way for companies to evaluate candidates. At Adaface, our mission is to help companies find great candidates by assessing on-the-job skills required for a role.

Why we started Adaface ->

Reason #3

Non-googleable questions

We have a very high focus on the quality of questions that test for on-the-job skills. Every question is non-googleable and we have a very high bar for the level of subject matter experts we onboard to create these questions. We have crawlers to check if any of the questions are leaked online. If/ when a question gets leaked, we get an alert. We change the question for you & let you know.

These are just a small sample from our library of 10,000+ questions. The actual questions on this Microsoft SQL Server Test will be non-googleable.

🧐 Question
Medium Backup Strategy Backups Troubleshooting	Solve
As a DBA, you receive an alert notifying you that the production database has gone offline due to a severe issue. Fortunately, you have a proper backup strategy in place. The backups are performed as follows: 1. Full database backup every Sunday at 2:00 AM. 2. Differential backup every day at 2:00 AM, except Sunday. 3. Transaction log backup every hour. Today is Wednesday, and the failure occurred at 10:15 AM. You have the following backup files available: 1. Full backup: Full_Backup_Sun.bak taken on Sunday 2:00 AM. 2. Differential backups: Diff_Backup_Mon.bak, Diff_Backup_Tue.bak, Diff_Backup_Wed.bak taken at 2:00 AM on their respective days. 3. Transaction log backups: Hourly backups from Sunday 3:00 AM until Wednesday 10:00 AM, like TLog_Backup_Wed_09.bak, TLog_Backup_Wed_10.bak. Given the RPO (Recovery Point Objective) of 15 minutes, which of the following sequences of restore operations would ensure minimal data loss? A: Full_Backup_Sun.bak, Diff_Backup_Wed.bak, then all Transaction Log backups from Wednesday. B: Full_Backup_Sun.bak, Diff_Backup_Tue.bak, then all Transaction Log backups from Tuesday and Wednesday. C: Full_Backup_Sun.bak, Diff_Backup_Wed.bak, then Transaction Log backups from Wednesday 2:00 AM to 10:00 AM. D: Full_Backup_Sun.bak, then all Transaction Log backups from Sunday to Wednesday 10:00 AM. E: Full_Backup_Sun.bak, Diff_Backup_Mon.bak, Diff_Backup_Tue.bak, Diff_Backup_Wed.bak, then Transaction Log backups from Wednesday 2:00 AM to 10:00 AM.
Medium Transaction Log Management Performance Tuning Log Management	Solve
You are a DBA at a large company managing an SQL Server database which is crucial for daily operations. The database is configured with the Full recovery model. The database is experiencing considerable transaction log growth during business hours, which is impacting the disk space and performance. The following operations are performed on this database: 1. A large ETL process that runs every night, which transforms and loads data into several tables. 2. A data archiving job that runs every night, which removes old data from several tables. 3. Frequent read/write operations during the day as part of normal business operations. Given this scenario, which of the following strategies could help manage the transaction log growth effectively? A: Switch to the Simple recovery model. B: Schedule frequent log backup and cleanups during business hours. C: Shrink the transaction log file size during business hours. D: Increase the database file size.
Medium Multi Select JOIN GROUP BY	Solve
Consider the following SQL table: How many rows does the following SQL query return?
Medium nth highest sales Nested queries User Defined Functions	Solve
Consider the following SQL table: Which of the following SQL commands will find the ‘nth highest Sales’ if it exists (returns null otherwise)?
Medium Select & IN Nested queries	Solve
Consider the following SQL table: Which of the following SQL queries would return the year when neither a football or cricket winner was chosen?
Medium Sorting Ubers Nested queries Join Comparison operators	Solve
Consider the following SQL table: What will be the first two tuples resulting from the following SQL command?
Hard With, AVG & SUM MAX() MIN() Aggregate functions	Solve
Consider the following SQL table: How many tuples does the following query return?

	🧐 Question	🔧 Skill
	Medium Backup Strategy Backups Troubleshooting	3 mins SQL Server	Solve
As a DBA, you receive an alert notifying you that the production database has gone offline due to a severe issue. Fortunately, you have a proper backup strategy in place. The backups are performed as follows: 1. Full database backup every Sunday at 2:00 AM. 2. Differential backup every day at 2:00 AM, except Sunday. 3. Transaction log backup every hour. Today is Wednesday, and the failure occurred at 10:15 AM. You have the following backup files available: 1. Full backup: Full_Backup_Sun.bak taken on Sunday 2:00 AM. 2. Differential backups: Diff_Backup_Mon.bak, Diff_Backup_Tue.bak, Diff_Backup_Wed.bak taken at 2:00 AM on their respective days. 3. Transaction log backups: Hourly backups from Sunday 3:00 AM until Wednesday 10:00 AM, like TLog_Backup_Wed_09.bak, TLog_Backup_Wed_10.bak. Given the RPO (Recovery Point Objective) of 15 minutes, which of the following sequences of restore operations would ensure minimal data loss? A: Full_Backup_Sun.bak, Diff_Backup_Wed.bak, then all Transaction Log backups from Wednesday. B: Full_Backup_Sun.bak, Diff_Backup_Tue.bak, then all Transaction Log backups from Tuesday and Wednesday. C: Full_Backup_Sun.bak, Diff_Backup_Wed.bak, then Transaction Log backups from Wednesday 2:00 AM to 10:00 AM. D: Full_Backup_Sun.bak, then all Transaction Log backups from Sunday to Wednesday 10:00 AM. E: Full_Backup_Sun.bak, Diff_Backup_Mon.bak, Diff_Backup_Tue.bak, Diff_Backup_Wed.bak, then Transaction Log backups from Wednesday 2:00 AM to 10:00 AM.
	Medium Transaction Log Management Performance Tuning Log Management	3 mins SQL Server	Solve
You are a DBA at a large company managing an SQL Server database which is crucial for daily operations. The database is configured with the Full recovery model. The database is experiencing considerable transaction log growth during business hours, which is impacting the disk space and performance. The following operations are performed on this database: 1. A large ETL process that runs every night, which transforms and loads data into several tables. 2. A data archiving job that runs every night, which removes old data from several tables. 3. Frequent read/write operations during the day as part of normal business operations. Given this scenario, which of the following strategies could help manage the transaction log growth effectively? A: Switch to the Simple recovery model. B: Schedule frequent log backup and cleanups during business hours. C: Shrink the transaction log file size during business hours. D: Increase the database file size.
	Medium Multi Select JOIN GROUP BY	2 mins SQL	Solve
Consider the following SQL table: How many rows does the following SQL query return?
	Medium nth highest sales Nested queries User Defined Functions	3 mins SQL	Solve
Consider the following SQL table: Which of the following SQL commands will find the ‘nth highest Sales’ if it exists (returns null otherwise)?
	Medium Select & IN Nested queries	3 mins SQL	Solve
Consider the following SQL table: Which of the following SQL queries would return the year when neither a football or cricket winner was chosen?
	Medium Sorting Ubers Nested queries Join Comparison operators	3 mins SQL	Solve
Consider the following SQL table: What will be the first two tuples resulting from the following SQL command?
	Hard With, AVG & SUM MAX() MIN() Aggregate functions	2 mins SQL	Solve
Consider the following SQL table: How many tuples does the following query return?

	🧐 Question	🔧 Skill	💪 Difficulty	⌛ Time
	Backup Strategy Backups Troubleshooting	SQL Server	Medium	3 mins	Solve
As a DBA, you receive an alert notifying you that the production database has gone offline due to a severe issue. Fortunately, you have a proper backup strategy in place. The backups are performed as follows: 1. Full database backup every Sunday at 2:00 AM. 2. Differential backup every day at 2:00 AM, except Sunday. 3. Transaction log backup every hour. Today is Wednesday, and the failure occurred at 10:15 AM. You have the following backup files available: 1. Full backup: Full_Backup_Sun.bak taken on Sunday 2:00 AM. 2. Differential backups: Diff_Backup_Mon.bak, Diff_Backup_Tue.bak, Diff_Backup_Wed.bak taken at 2:00 AM on their respective days. 3. Transaction log backups: Hourly backups from Sunday 3:00 AM until Wednesday 10:00 AM, like TLog_Backup_Wed_09.bak, TLog_Backup_Wed_10.bak. Given the RPO (Recovery Point Objective) of 15 minutes, which of the following sequences of restore operations would ensure minimal data loss? A: Full_Backup_Sun.bak, Diff_Backup_Wed.bak, then all Transaction Log backups from Wednesday. B: Full_Backup_Sun.bak, Diff_Backup_Tue.bak, then all Transaction Log backups from Tuesday and Wednesday. C: Full_Backup_Sun.bak, Diff_Backup_Wed.bak, then Transaction Log backups from Wednesday 2:00 AM to 10:00 AM. D: Full_Backup_Sun.bak, then all Transaction Log backups from Sunday to Wednesday 10:00 AM. E: Full_Backup_Sun.bak, Diff_Backup_Mon.bak, Diff_Backup_Tue.bak, Diff_Backup_Wed.bak, then Transaction Log backups from Wednesday 2:00 AM to 10:00 AM.
	Transaction Log Management Performance Tuning Log Management	SQL Server	Medium	3 mins	Solve
You are a DBA at a large company managing an SQL Server database which is crucial for daily operations. The database is configured with the Full recovery model. The database is experiencing considerable transaction log growth during business hours, which is impacting the disk space and performance. The following operations are performed on this database: 1. A large ETL process that runs every night, which transforms and loads data into several tables. 2. A data archiving job that runs every night, which removes old data from several tables. 3. Frequent read/write operations during the day as part of normal business operations. Given this scenario, which of the following strategies could help manage the transaction log growth effectively? A: Switch to the Simple recovery model. B: Schedule frequent log backup and cleanups during business hours. C: Shrink the transaction log file size during business hours. D: Increase the database file size.
	Multi Select JOIN GROUP BY	SQL	Medium	2 mins	Solve
Consider the following SQL table: How many rows does the following SQL query return?
	nth highest sales Nested queries User Defined Functions	SQL	Medium	3 mins	Solve
Consider the following SQL table: Which of the following SQL commands will find the ‘nth highest Sales’ if it exists (returns null otherwise)?
	Select & IN Nested queries	SQL	Medium	3 mins	Solve
Consider the following SQL table: Which of the following SQL queries would return the year when neither a football or cricket winner was chosen?
	Sorting Ubers Nested queries Join Comparison operators	SQL	Medium	3 mins	Solve
Consider the following SQL table: What will be the first two tuples resulting from the following SQL command?
	With, AVG & SUM MAX() MIN() Aggregate functions	SQL	Hard	2 mins	Solve
Consider the following SQL table: How many tuples does the following query return?

Reason #4

1200+ customers in 75 countries

With Adaface, we were able to optimise our initial screening process by upwards of 75%, freeing up precious time for both hiring managers and our talent acquisition team alike!

Brandon Lee, Head of People, Love, Bonito

Reason #5

Designed for elimination, not selection

The most important thing while implementing the pre-employment Microsoft SQL Server Test in your hiring process is that it is an elimination tool, not a selection tool. In other words: you want to use the test to eliminate the candidates who do poorly on the test, not to select the candidates who come out at the top. While they are super valuable, pre-employment tests do not paint the entire picture of a candidate’s abilities, knowledge, and motivations. Multiple easy questions are more predictive of a candidate's ability than fewer hard questions. Harder questions are often "trick" based questions, which do not provide any meaningful signal about the candidate's skillset.

Reason #6

1 click candidate invites

Email invites: You can send candidates an email invite to the Microsoft SQL Server Test from your dashboard by entering their email address.

Public link: You can create a public link for each test that you can share with candidates.

API or integrations: You can invite candidates directly from your ATS by using our pre-built integrations with popular ATS systems or building a custom integration with your in-house ATS.

Reason #7

Detailed scorecards & benchmarks

Reason #8

High completion rate

Adaface tests are conversational, low-stress, and take just 25-40 mins to complete.

This is why Adaface has the highest test-completion rate (86%), which is more than 2x better than traditional assessments.

Reason #9

Advanced Proctoring

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What roles can I use the Microsoft SQL Server Test for?

SQL Server DBA
MS SQL Server Database Admin

What topics are covered in the SQL Server Online Test?

Windows Mode, Mixed Mode

Two Authentication Modes

SQL Profiler

Recursive Stored Procedure

Local and Global Temporary Tables

CHECK Constraint

Sub Query

SQL Server Agent

Scheduled Tasks

COALESCE

FLOOR Function

Locks

SIGN Function

Used to execute a batch of SQL code when insert or update or delete commands are executed against a table

Trigger

IDENTITY Column

Bulkcopy

UNION

UNION ALL

Stored Procedure

Dynamic SQL

Collation

SET NOCOUNT ON/OFF Statement

SQL Server creates magic tables to hold the values during the DML operations

Magic Tables

SUBSTR

CHARINDEX

FOR Clause

Varchar and Nvarchar Types

GETDATE and SYSDATETIME

Used to extract sample of rows randomly that are all necessary for the application

TABLESAMPLE

Used to store XML documents in the SQL Server database

XML Datatype

Change Data Capture

CDC

An attack by malicious users in which malicious code can be inserted into strings that can be passed to an instance of SQL server for parsing and execution

SQL Injection

Filtered Index

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The hiring managers felt that through the technical questions that they asked during the panel interviews, they were able to tell which candidates had better scores, and differentiated with those who did not score as well. They are highly satisfied with the quality of candidates shortlisted with the Adaface screening.

85%

reduction in screening time

View Full Case Study

FAQs

What is the SQL Server online test?

The SQL Server online test is a skills assessment that evaluates a candidate's knowledge and skills related to Microsoft SQL Server, which is a relational database management system used for storing and retrieving data. The test typically includes questions on SQL Server features, database design, SQL queries etc.

Can I combine multiple skills into one custom assessment?

Yes, absolutely. Custom assessments are set up based on your job description, and will include questions on all must-have skills you specify.

Do you have any anti-cheating or proctoring features in place?

We have the following anti-cheating features in place:

Non-googleable questions
IP proctoring
Web proctoring
Webcam proctoring
Plagiarism detection
Secure browser

Read more about the proctoring features.

How do I interpret test scores?

The primary thing to keep in mind is that an assessment is an elimination tool, not a selection tool. A skills assessment is optimized to help you eliminate candidates who are not technically qualified for the role, it is not optimized to help you find the best candidate for the role. So the ideal way to use an assessment is to decide a threshold score (typically 55%, we help you benchmark) and invite all candidates who score above the threshold for the next rounds of interview.

What experience level can I use this test for?

Each Adaface assessment is customized to your job description/ ideal candidate persona (our subject matter experts will pick the right questions for your assessment from our library of 10000+ questions). This assessment can be customized for any experience level.

Does every candidate get the same questions?

Yes, it makes it much easier for you to compare candidates. Options for MCQ questions and the order of questions are randomized. We have anti-cheating/ proctoring features in place. In our enterprise plan, we also have the option to create multiple versions of the same assessment with questions of similar difficulty levels.