I’m not sure what knowledge you were expecting to see, but I suspect you wanted to see some hard-core SQL skills. What would have you considered to be “stellar”?

Also keep in mind a very simple fact: they were available. I bet there were at least a dozen or so people that applied but did not make it as far in the process because there is no way their current employer would let them leave work for a week to interview with Microsoft.

I think these four did a very good job considering all the pressure they were under. And let’s not forget that the show likely was creative with some of their editing.

I’m sure Microsoft offers some training programs. I hear they have this thing called an MCM program…

Spot. On.

I attended an intensive t-sql course taught by an MVP who is one of the best authors, speakers, and SQL educators out there. All the attendees were pros. One challenge given to us near the end of the five day course was: write code to update col1 of a table with the data from col2 and vice versa.

We spent an hour. The answer:

UPDATE tbl SET col1 = col2, col2 = col1;

This works because of the all-at-once nature of SQL Server. Looks dirt simple, huh? So easy everyone who writes t-sql should be able to toss this off in two seconds? Not if you’re second guessing yourself… working under stress….. have recently been fooled by deceptive questions, have been learning tons of new things and have a full brain, and/or haven’t learned the all-at-once concept in a way that it would make it immediately spring to mind here.

The point is…. they’re not MCM’s, but the group did better than you think. Certainly an enlightening presentation by Microsoft for many reasons. Enjoyed it.

Still, it was interesting.