Why are you looking for a job?
Strictly speaking, this is not a java question, but it shows up in almost every job interview I've been to. The interviewer is testing the candidate's motivation for a job change. Invariably, the answer will be something like, advancing career and professional development. Of course, the candidate won't tell you he/she is looking for a 15% salary increase to cover the gas price increase, or he doesn't get along with his co-workers, or he didn't get the promotion or bonus, or he was rated Under-Perform in last year's performance review.
Which OS do you use in your development work, Linux, Windows, or Solaris?
Java is cross-platform, and I couldn't care less about OS while I'm writing java code. Unless the job is specifically about porting applications to other OS and deploying/distributing applications, I don't see how this is relevant. J2EE, JavaEE and Web applications are all made up of components that are managed by the application server, and thus shielded from the underlying OS.
Are you familiar with Oracle Database, or DB2?
Java persistence can now be easily achieved with ORM frameworks such as Hibernate, TopLink. The latest release of EJB 3 and Java Persistence API has standardize the way persistence is done in Java, J2EE, and JavaEE. The goal of these industry efforts is to let Java developers forget database stuff, which should be left to DBA. Even if Java developers in this project need to deal with database directly, I suppose they need to know about database design concepts and SQL, not some Oracle or DB2 stored procedures.