On Wed, 17 Sep 2003, Brion Wikes wrote: > Odd request. > I am not a developer myself, but would like to know what kinds of technical > interview questions (and possible answers) I can ask developers to try to > find someone that really knows what they are doing. > > I need to hire a postreSQL/php developer for some maintenance and upgrade > work on my site. > > The site is fairly sophisticated. I think it was built on postreSQL 6X and > PHP. When we loaded to the server, we ended up with 7X and there seems to be > a few wrinkles with the code on the newer version. > A few of the main issues that I am going to need this person to deal with > are: > > > > 1) On one custom form, I am getting the error - "no OID was passed" > > 2) Being able to search "non-case sensitive" AND being able to hold the > order of the results from page to page. substitute ilike for like or ~* for ~ in the where clause for this one. > 3) Using an "apostrophe" anywhere in any of the forms, creates a page error Turn on the magic_quotes_gpc, and magic_quotes_runtime parameters to fix this. You may only need the first. Test it both ways. Either that or put addslashes/stripslashes all over the place. > 4) Every time I edit one of the forms with a url, an extra "http://"; gets > put into the address simple fix, the code is probably programmed to prepend http://. The old code may have been programmed to remove the http:// during display but got broken somehow. > 5) On several forms, if you have not completed all the information, and you > get an error message, ALL of the info that was input during that session, is > cleared. > > > > I am nervous to have a complete stranger working on the code, but the > original developer is no longer available. > I am guessing most of these should be fairly straight forward fixes. > > So any help on screening questions that will help me find a developer > capable of solving these problems, is most appreciated. Ask them what they think of these issues and what the likely causes are. any competent PHP/Postgresql programmer should be able to fix 2, 3, or 4 in an afternoon.
