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Delete Files in Shared Location/SAN

The Voice of the DBA

Questioning the Interviewer

This editorial was originally released on Oct 14, 2012. It is being republished as Steve is out of the office.

When you are in a job interview, it's almost inevitable that near the end the interviewer will ask you what questions you have. As noted in this post, a large number of people have no questions. It's certainly possible that the interview covered all the questions you would want to have answered, but do you have a list of questions before the interview starts?

You should. I think it's important that you ask questions in an interview, especially questions that are important to you. Many times each of us wants a job, needs to get a job, and don't want to do anything that might jeopardize our chances. However taking a job that's a bad fit, or has some aspect that will bother you every day is a bad idea. You spend a lot of time at work and a poor work environment can make your life miserable.

In the piece, the person makes a good point that your questions reflect your priorities and can result in an unfavorable impression. I think you can ask about topics like telecommuting, but do so in a way that shows you are interested and excited about the job. I've noted long commutes and the time they take in an interview, asking if I can better use that time to solve problems by working at home a day or two. The way you bring topics up can matter, so make sure that you word your questions in a way that shows you are interested in doing a good job.

I do think that asking questions which show your enthusiasm or interest in the position are good questions to ask. However you should think about those questions before you go to the interview and determine if what impression they make. Write down your questions, and if they are answered during the interview, mark them off and ask any remaining questions at the end.

The interview is your best chance to determine if the position is a good fit for you and the company, so take advantage of that.

Steve Jones from SQLServerCentral.com

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Featured Contents

PowerShell Solutions - Working with files

Daniel Calbimonte from SQLServerCentral.com

When we administer a SQL Database, we always have to work with files. This new article shows how to handle them using PowerShell. More »

Managing SQL Server Backup and Restore History Information

Additional Articles from Database Journal

Greg Larson explains that SQL Server provides a couple of different ways to delete backup and restore history. If you want to remove backup and restore information for all databases based on a date you can use the sp_delete_backuphistory system stored procedure. Or you can use the system stored procedure named sp_delete_database_backuphistory if you want to remove all backup and restore history for a specific database. More »

From the SQLServerCentral Blogs - PowerShell, Pester and Ola Hallengrens Maintenance Solution

Rob Sewell from SQLServerCentral Blogs

If you are a SQL DBA you will have heard of Ola Hallengrens Maintenance solution If you haven’t go and... More »

From the SQLServerCentral Blogs - SQL SSRS Express Edition Cannot Connect to Azure SQL Databases

willassaf@gmail.com from SQLServerCentral Blogs

This has bit a couple of clients recently, figured I'd put out a PSA. Express editions of SQL Server Reporting Service,... More »

Question of the Day

Today's Question (by Steve Jones):

In my Excel 2016 sheet, I use this formula put strings from a few cells together.

=CONCATENATE(I4, J4, K4)

I want to use the same type of forumula in a DAX calculation that gathers data from three columns together. How should I do this?

Think you know the answer? Click here, and find out if you are right.

We keep track of your score to give you bragging rights against your peers.
This question is worth 1 point in this category: Concatenate.

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Yesterday's Question of the Day

Yesterday's Question (by Steve Jones):

What does this return?

 SELECT CEILING(-2.3)

Answer: -2

Explanation:

CEILING returns the highest integer near the numeric passed in, which for -2.3 is -2.

Ref: CEILING - https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms189818.aspx

Rounding Tips and Tricks - http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/T-SQL/145448/

» Discuss this question and answer on the forums

Featured Script

Delete Files in Shared Location/SAN

Harsha Bhagat from SQLServerCentral.com

As a DBA when we have lots of shared location and ForFiles does not work and throws the below error

ERROR: UNC paths (\\machine\share) are not supported.

The procedure will be helpful to delete the files. The procedure needs to be run by providing the below details.

exec DeleteOldFiles @path= '\\sharelocation$\servename\transactional_logs\',

@days = -15

To extract the date, sbustring function is used in the procedure. Please make changes as necessary. In my case, I had the DatabaseName_Datetime.trn

e.g. MYDatabase_20160905080054.trn

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