André Kamman Interview

After 10 weeks (or almost weekly) of corrupt databases, missing data and a challenging competition the Database Corruption Challenge, finally comes to an end. As part of the last week of the challenge I created a short blog interview for the participants. This interview is André Kamman.

André placed second overall in the the Database Corruption Challenge scoring 22 points which pushed hi AndreKamman m above a 3 way tie for third place. He was one of only 3 participants to complete all 10 challenges in the contest, the other two were Rob Farley and Neil Abrahams.

Here are the overall statistics for André in the Database Corruption Challenge

Overall Rank: #2
Points Scored: 22
Number of Challenges Solved: 10
Country: Netherlands

What compelled you to want to participate in the Database Corruption Challenge?

I stumbled upon the first week after a tweet from Brent and I was hooked right away.
Or maybe it’s an OCD thing, just wanted to have a 1 on the score board in all those weeks ;-)

What did you find the most interesting in the Database Corruption Challenge?

Learning how to get as much data back as possible while using DBCC Writepage as little as possible.

What did you learn in the Database Corruption Challenge?

Lots, my knowledge about internals, backup and restore, index hints, hack attaching all got a boost. And I loved the whole investigating and making sure I found all the data.

How many weeks did you participate in the Database Corruption Challenge?

All 10 of them

Any suggestions to those who might want to give some of the 10 Database Corruption Challenge examples a try?

Try investigating the data before fixing stuff, you may lose data that you need to solve the puzzle.
These pages are very handy to have open in your browser:
http://www.sqlskills.com/blogs/paul/inside-the-storage-engine-anatomy-of-a-page/
http://improve.dk/reverse-engineering-sql-server-page-headers/

What is your twitter handle, and your linked in url (if you have either)?

Twitter: @andrekamman
Linked In: https://nl.linkedin.com/in/andrekamman

André has also written a blog post titled A FUN WAY TO LEARN ABOUT DATABASE CORRUPTION describing the Database Corruption Challenge.

André Kamman Interview – Database Corruption Challenge