10/26/22, 10:49 PM 41 Essential SQL Interview Questions and Answers | Toptal®

41 Essential SQL Interview Questions *

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INTERVIEW QUESTIONS

What does UNION do? What is the difference between UNION and UNION

ALL ?

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UNION merges the contents of two structurally-compatible tables into a single combined
table. The difference between UNION and UNION ALL is that UNION will omit duplicate
records whereas UNION ALL will include duplicate records.

It is important to note that the performance of UNION ALL will typically be better than
UNION , since UNION requires the server to do the additional work of removing any
duplicates. So, in cases where is is certain that there will not be any duplicates, or where
having duplicates is not a problem, use of UNION ALL would be recommended for
performance reasons.

List and explain the different types of JOIN clauses supported in ANSI-
standard SQL.
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ANSI-standard
®
SQL specifies five types of JOIN clauses as follows:

INNER JOIN (a.k.a. “simple join”): Returns all rows for which there is at least one match
in BOTH tables. This is the default type of join if no specific JOIN type is specified.

LEFT JOIN (or LEFT OUTER JOIN ): Returns all rows from the left table, and the matched
rows from the right table; i.e., the results will contain all records from the left table, even
if the JOIN condition doesn’t find any matching records in the right table. This means
that if the ON clause doesn’t match any records in the right table, the JOIN will still
return a row in the result for that record in the left table, but with NULL in each column
from the right table.

RIGHT JOIN (or RIGHT OUTER JOIN ): Returns all rows from the right table, and the
matched rows from the left table. This is the exact opposite of a LEFT JOIN ; i.e., the
results will contain all records from the right table, even if the JOIN condition doesn’t
find any matching records in the left table. This means that if the ON clause doesn’t
match any records in the left table, the JOIN will still return a row in the result for that
record in the right table, but with NULL in each column from the left table.

FULL JOIN (or FULL OUTER JOIN ): Returns all rows for which there is a match in
EITHER of the tables. Conceptually, a FULL JOIN combines the effect of applying both
a LEFT JOIN and a RIGHT JOIN ; i.e., its result set is equivalent to performing a UNION
of the results of left and right outer queries.

CROSS JOIN : Returns all records where each row from the first table is combined with
each row from the second table (i.e., returns the Cartesian product of the sets of rows
from the joined tables). Note that a CROSS JOIN can either be specified using the
C OSS O t (“ li it j i t ti ”) (b) li ti th t bl i th O l

Given the following tables:

sql> SELECT * FROM runners;

+----+--------------+
| id | name |
+----+--------------+
| 1 | John Doe |
| 2 | Jane Doe |
| 3 | Alice Jones |
| 4 | Bobby Louis |
| 5 | Lisa Romero |
+----+--------------+

sql> SELECT * FROM races;

+----+----------------+-----------+
| id | event
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+----+----------------+-----------+

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| 1 | 100 meter dash | 2 |

| 2 | 500 meter dash | 3 |
®
| 3 | cross-country | 2 |
| 4 | triathalon | NULL |
+----+----------------+-----------+

What will be the result of the query below?

SELECT * FROM runners WHERE id NOT IN (SELECT winner_id FROM races)

Explain your answer and also provide an alternative version of this

query that will avoid the issue that it exposes.

Hide answer

Surprisingly, given the sample data provided, the result of this query will be an empty set.
The reason for this is as follows: If the set being evaluated by the SQL NOT IN condition
contains any values that are null, then the outer query here will return an empty set, even if
there are many runner ids that match winner_ids in the races table.

Knowing this, a query that avoids this issue would be as follows:

SELECT * FROM runners WHERE id NOT IN (SELECT winner_id FROM races WHERE winner_id

Note, this is assuming the standard SQL behavior that you get without modifying the default
ANSI_NULLS setting.

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Given two tables created and populated as follows:

CREATE TABLE dbo.envelope(id int, user_id int);

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CREATE TABLE dbo.docs(idnum int, pageseq int, doctext varchar(100));

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INSERT INTO dbo.envelope VALUES

®
(1,1),
(2,2),
(3,3);

INSERT INTO dbo.docs(idnum,pageseq) VALUES

(1,5),
(2,6),
(null,0);

What will the result be from the following query:

UPDATE docs SET doctext=pageseq FROM docs INNER JOIN envelope ON envelope.id=docs.i
WHERE EXISTS (
SELECT 1 FROM dbo.docs
WHERE id=envelope.id
);

Explain your answer.

Hide answer

The result of the query will be as follows:

idnum pageseq doctext

1 5 5
2 6 6
NULL 0 NULL

The EXISTS clause in the above query is a red herring. It will always be true since ID is
not a member of dbo.docs . As such, it will refer to the envelope table comparing itself to
itself!

The idnum value of NULL will not be set since the join of NULL will not return a result
when attempting a match with any value of envelope .

Assume a schema of Emp ( Id, Name, DeptId ) , Dept ( Id, Name) .

If there are 10 records in the Emp table and 5 records in the Dept table,
how many rows will be displayed in the result of the following SQL
query:
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Select * From Emp, Dept

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Explain your answer.

®
Hide answer

The query will result in 50 rows as a “cartesian product” or “cross join”, which is the default
whenever the ‘where’ clause is omitted.

Given two tables created as follows

create table test_a(id numeric);

create table test_b(id numeric);

insert into test_a(id) values

(10),
(20),
(30),
(40),
(50);

insert into test_b(id) values

(10),
(30),
(50);

Write a query to fetch values in table test_a that are and not in test_b
without using the NOT keyword.

Note, Oracle does not support the above INSERT syntax, so you would
need this instead:

insert into test_a(id) values (10);

insert into test_a(id) values (20);
insert into test_a(id) values (30);
insert into test_a(id) values (40);
insert into test_a(id) values (50);
insert into test_b(id) values (10);
insert into test_b(id) values (30);
insert into test_b(id) values (50);

Hide answer

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In SQL Server,
® PostgreSQL, and SQLite, this can be done using the except keyword as

follows:

select * from test_a

except
select * from test_b;

In Oracle, the minus keyword is used instead. Note that if there are multiple columns, say
ID and Name, the column should be explicitly stated in Oracle queries: Select ID from
test_a minus select ID from test_b

MySQL does not support the except function. However, there is a standard SQL solution
that works in all of the above engines, including MySQL:

select a.id
from test_a a
left join test_b b on a.id = b.id
where b.id is null;

Write a SQL query to find the 10th highest employee salary from an
Employee table. Explain your answer.

(Note: You may assume that there are at least 10 records in the Employee
table.)

Hide answer

This can be done as follows:

SELECT TOP (1) Salary FROM

(
SELECT DISTINCT TOP (10) Salary FROM Employee ORDER BY Salary DESC
) AS Emp ORDER BY Salary

This works as follows:

First, the SELECT DISTINCT TOP (10) Salary FROM Employee ORDER BY Salary DESC query
will select the top 10 salaried employees in the table. However, those salaries will be listed
in descending order. That was necessary for the first query to work, but now picking the top
1 from that list will give you the highest salary not the the 10th highest salary.

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Therefore, the second query reorders the 10 records in ascending order (which the default
sort order) and
® then selects the top record (which will now be the lowest of those 10
salaries).

Not all databases support the TOP keyword. For example, MySQL and PostreSQL use the
LIMIT keyword, as follows:

SELECT Salary FROM

(
SELECT DISTINCT Salary FROM Employee ORDER BY Salary DESC LIMIT 10
) AS Emp ORDER BY Salary LIMIT 1;

Or even more concisely, in MySQL this can be:

SELECT DISTINCT Salary FROM Employee ORDER BY Salary DESC LIMIT 9,1;

And in PostgreSQL this can be:

SELECT DISTINCT S l FROM E l ORDER BY S l DESC LIMIT 1 OFFSET 9

Write a SQL query using UNION ALL (not UNION ) that uses the WHERE
clause to eliminate duplicates. Why might you want to do this?

Hide answer

You can avoid duplicates using UNION ALL and still run much faster than UNION DISTINCT
(which is actually same as UNION) by running a query like this:

SELECT * FROM mytable WHERE a=X UNION ALL SELECT * FROM mytable WHERE b=Y AND a!=X

The key is the AND a!=X part. This gives you the benefits of the UNION (a.k.a., UNION
DISTINCT ) command, while avoiding much of its performance hit.

Given the following tables:

SELECT * FROM users;

user_id username
1 John Doe
2 Jane Don
3 Alice Jones
4 Lisa Romero
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SELECT * FROM training_details;

®
user_training_id user_id training_id training_date
1 1 1 "2015-08-02"
2 2 1 "2015-08-03"
3 3 2 "2015-08-02"
4 4 2 "2015-08-04"
5 2 2 "2015-08-03"
6 1 1 "2015-08-02"
7 3 2 "2015-08-04"
8 4 3 "2015-08-03"
9 1 4 "2015-08-03"
10 3 1 "2015-08-02"
11 4 2 "2015-08-04"
12 3 2 "2015-08-02"
13 1 1 "2015-08-02"
14 4 3 "2015-08-03"

Write a query to to get the list of users who took the a training lesson
more than once in the same day, grouped by user and training lesson,
each ordered from the most recent lesson date to oldest date.

Hide answer

SELECT
u.user_id,
username,
training_id,
training_date,
count( user_training_id ) AS count
FROM users u JOIN training_details t ON t.user_id = u.user_id
GROUP BY u.user_id,
username,
training_id,
training_date
HAVING count( user_training_id ) > 1
ORDER BY training_date DESC;

user_id username training_id training_date count

4 Lisa Romero 2 August, 04 2015 00:00:00 2
4 Lisa Romero 3 August, 03 2015 00:00:00 2
1 John Doe 1 August, 02 2015 00:00:00 3
3 Alice Jones 2 August, 02 2015 00:00:00 2

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What is an
® execution plan? When would you use it? How would you view

the execution plan?

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An execution plan is basically a road map that graphically or textually shows the data
retrieval methods chosen by the SQL server’s query optimizer for a stored procedure or ad
hoc query. Execution plans are very useful for helping a developer understand and analyze
the performance characteristics of a query or stored procedure, since the plan is used to
execute the query or stored procedure.

In many SQL systems, a textual execution plan can be obtained using a keyword such as
EXPLAIN , and visual representations can often be obtained as well. In Microsoft SQL
Server, the Query Analyzer has an option called “Show Execution Plan” (located on the
Query drop down menu). If this option is turned on, it will display query execution plans in a
t i d h i

List and explain each of the ACID properties that collectively guarantee
that database transactions are processed reliably.

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ACID (Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability) is a set of properties that guarantee that
database transactions are processed reliably. They are defined as follows:

Atomicity. Atomicity requires that each transaction be “all or nothing”: if one part of the
transaction fails, the entire transaction fails, and the database state is left unchanged. An
atomic system must guarantee atomicity in each and every situation, including power
failures, errors, and crashes.

Consistency. The consistency property ensures that any transaction will bring the
database from one valid state to another. Any data written to the database must be valid
according to all defined rules, including constraints, cascades, triggers, and any
combination thereof.

Isolation. The isolation property ensures that the concurrent execution of transactions
results in a system state that would be obtained if transactions were executed serially,
i.e., one after the other. Providing isolation is the main goal of concurrency control.
Depending on concurrency control method (i.e. if it uses strict - as opposed to relaxed -
serializability), the effects of an incomplete transaction might not even be visible to
another
By continuing transaction.
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Durability. Durability means that once a transaction has been committed, it will remain
so, even® in the event of power loss, crashes, or errors. In a relational database, for
instance, once a group of SQL statements execute, the results need to be stored

Given a table dbo.users where the column user_id is a unique numeric

identifier, how can you efficiently select the first 100 odd user_id values
from the table?

(Assume the table contains well over 100 records with odd user_id

values.)

Hide answer

SELECT TOP 100 user_id FROM dbo.users WHERE user_id % 2 = 1 ORDER BY user_id

What are the NVL and the NVL2 functions in SQL? How do they differ?

Hide answer

Both the NVL(exp1, exp2) and NVL2(exp1, exp2, exp3) functions check the value exp1
to see if it is null.

With the NVL(exp1, exp2) function, if exp1 is not null, then the value of exp1 is
returned; otherwise, the value of exp2 is returned, but case to the same data type as that
of exp1 .

With the NVL2(exp1, exp2, exp3) function, if exp1 is not null, then exp2 is returned;
otherwise, the value of exp3 is returned.

How can you select all the even number records from a table? All the
odd number records?

Hide answer

To select all the even number records from a table:

Select * from table where id % 2 = 0

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To select all the odd number records from a table:

®
Select * from table where id % 2 != 0

What is the difference between the RANK() and DENSE_RANK() functions?

Provide an example.

Hide answer

The only difference between the RANK() and DENSE_RANK() functions is in cases where
there is a “tie”; i.e., in cases where multiple values in a set have the same ranking. In such
cases, RANK() will assign non-consecutive “ranks” to the values in the set (resulting in gaps
between the integer ranking values when there is a tie), whereas DENSE_RANK() will assign
consecutive ranks to the values in the set (so there will be no gaps between the integer
ranking values in the case of a tie).

For example, consider the set {25, 25, 50, 75, 75, 100} . For such a set, RANK() will
return {1, 1, 3, 4, 4, 6} (note that the values 2 and 5 are skipped), whereas
S () ill t { 2 3 3 }

What is the difference between the WHERE and HAVING clauses?

Hide answer

When GROUP BY is not used, the WHERE and HAVING clauses are essentially equivalent.

However, when GROUP BY is used:

The WHERE clause is used to filter records from a result. The filtering occurs before any
groupings are made.

The HAVING clause is used to filter values from a group (i.e., to check conditions after
aggregation into groups has been performed).

Given a table Employee having columns empName and empId , what will be
the result of the SQL query below?

select empName
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site Employee
you agreeorder
to ourby 2 desc;
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Hide answer
®

“Order by 2” is only valid when there are at least two columns being used in select
statement. However, in this query, even though the Employee table has 2 columns, the
query is only selecting 1 column name, so “Order by 2” will cause the statement to throw an
error while executing the above sql query.

What will be the output of the below query, given an Employee table
having 10 records?

BEGIN TRAN
TRUNCATE TABLE Employees
ROLLBACK
SELECT * FROM Employees

Hide answer

This query will return 10 records as TRUNCATE was executed in the transaction. TRUNCATE
does not itself keep a log but BEGIN TRANSACTION keeps track of the TRUNCATE command.

1. What is the difference between single-row functions and multiple-

row functions?

2. What is the group by clause used for?

Hide answer

1. Single-row functions work with single row at a time. Multiple-row functions work with
data of multiple rows at a time.

2. The group by clause combines all those records that have identical values in a
particular field or any group of fields.

Imagine a single column in a table that is populated with either a single

digit (0-9) or a single character (a-z, A-Z). Write a SQL query to print
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‘Fizz’ for a numeric value or ‘Buzz’ for alphabetical value for all values in
that column.
®

Example:

['d', 'x', 'T', 8, 'a', 9, 6, 2, 'V']

…should output:

['Buzz', 'Buzz', 'Buzz', 'Fizz', 'Buzz','Fizz', 'Fizz', 'Fizz', 'Buzz']

Hide answer

SELECT col, case when upper(col) = lower(col) then 'Fizz' else 'Buzz' end as FizzBu

What is the difference between char and varchar2 ?

Hide answer

When stored in a database, varchar2 uses only the allocated space. E.g. if you have a
varchar2(1999) and put 50 bytes in the table, it will use 52 bytes.

But when stored in a database, char always uses the maximum length and is blank-
padded. E.g. if you have char(1999) and put 50 bytes in the table, it will consume 2000
bytes.

Write an SQL query to display the text CAPONE as:

C
A
P
O
N
E

Or in other words, an SQL query to transpose text.

Hide answer
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Declare @a® nvarchar(100)='capone';

Declare @length INT;
Declare @i INT=1;
SET @lenght=LEN(@a)
while @i<=@length
BEGIN
print(substring(@a,@i,1));
set @i=@i+1;
END

In Oracle SQL, this can be done as follows:

SELECT SUBSTR('CAPONE', LEVEL, 1)

FROM DUAL CONNECT BY LEVEL <= LENGTH('CAPONE');

Can we insert a row for identity column implicitly?

Hide answer

Yes, like so:

SET IDENTITY_INSERT TABLE1 ON

INSERT INTO TABLE1 (ID,NAME)

SELECT ID,NAME FROM TEMPTB1

SET IDENTITY_INSERT OFF

Given this table:

Testdb=# Select * FROM "Test"."EMP";

ID
----
1
2
3
4
5
(5 rows)
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What will be the output of below snippet?

®
Select SUM(1) FROM "Test"."EMP";
Select SUM(2) FROM "Test"."EMP";
Select SUM(3) FROM "Test"."EMP";

Hide answer

5
10
15

Table is as follows:

ID C1 C2 C3

1 Red Yellow Blue

2 NULL Red Green

3 Yellow NULL Violet

Print the rows which have ‘Yellow’ in one of the columns C1, C2, or C3,
but without using OR .

Hide answer

SELECT * FROM table

WHERE 'Yellow' IN (C1, C2, C3)

Write a query to insert/update Col2 ’s values to look exactly opposite to

Col1 ’s values.

Col1 Col2

1 0
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Col1 Col2
®

0 1

0 1

0 1

1 0

0 1

1 0

1 0

Hide answer

update table set col2 = case when col1 = 1 then 0 else 1 end

Or if the type is numeric:

update table set col2 = 1 - col1

How do you get the last id without the max function?

Hide answer

In MySQL:

select id from table order by id desc limit 1

In SQL Server:

select top 1 id from table order by id desc

What is the difference between IN

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Hide answer
®
IN :

Works on List result set

Doesn’t work on subqueries resulting in Virtual tables with multiple columns

Compares every value in the result list

Performance is comparatively SLOW for larger resultset of subquery

EXISTS :

Works on Virtual tables

Is used with co-related queries

Exits comparison when match is found

Performance is comparatively FAST for larger resultset of subquery

Suppose in a table, seven records are there.

The column is an identity column.

Now the client wants to insert a record after the identity value 7 with its
identity value starting from 10 .

Is it possible? If so, how? If not, why not?

Hide answer

Yes, it is possible, using a DBCC command:

create table tableA

(id int identity,
name nvarchar(50)
)
insert into tableA values ('ram')
insert into tableA values ('rahim')
insert into tableA values ('roja')
insert into tableA values ('rahman')
insert into tableA values ('rani')
insert into
By continuing to usetableA
this sitevalues ('raja')
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insert into tableA values ('raga')

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select * From tableA

DBCC CHECKIDENT(tableA,RESEED,9)
®
insert into tableA values ('roli')
insert into tableA values ('rosy')
insert into tableA values ('raka')
insert into tableA values ('rahul')
insert into tableA values ('rihan')
insert into tableA values ('bala')
insert into tableA values ('gala')

How can you use a CTE to return the fifth highest (or Nth highest) salary
from a table?

Hide answer

Declare @N int
set @N = 5;
WITH CTE AS
(
SELECT Name, Salary, EmpID, RN = ROW_NUMBER()
OVER (ORDER BY Salary DESC)
FROM Employee
)
SELECT Name, Salary, EmpID
FROM CTE
WHERE RN = @N

Given the following table named A :

x
------
2
-2
4
-4
-3
0
2

Write a single query to calculate the sum of all positive values of x and
he sumtoofuse
By continuing allthis
negative values
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Hide answer
®

select sum(case when x>0 then x else 0 end)sum_pos,sum(case when x<0 then x else 0

Given the table mass_table :

weight

5.67

34.567

365.253

34
Write a query that produces the output:

weight kg gms

5.67 5 67

34.567 34 567

365.253 365 253

34 34 0

Hide answer

select weight, trunc(weight) as kg, nvl(substr(weight - trunc(weight), 2), 0) as gm

from mass_table;

Consider the Employee table below.

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Emp_Id Emp_name Salary Manager_Id
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Emp_Id Emp_name Salary Manager_Id

®

10 Anil 50000 18

11 Vikas 75000 16

12 Nisha 40000 18

13 Nidhi 60000 17

14 Priya 80000 18

15 Mohit 45000 18

16 Rajesh 90000 –

17 Raman 55000 16

18 Santosh 65000 17
Write a query to generate below output:

Manager_Id Manager Average_Salary_Under_Manager

16 Rajesh 65000

17 Raman 62500

18 Santosh 53750

Hide answer

select b.emp_id as "Manager_Id",

b.emp_name as "Manager",
avg(a.salary) as "Average_Salary_Under_Manager"
from Employee a,
Employee b
where a.manager_id = b.emp_id
group by b.emp_id, b.emp_name
order by b.emp_id;

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How do you copy data from one table to another table ?
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®

INSERT INTO table2 (column1, column2, column3, ...)

SELECT column1, column2, column3, ...
FROM table1
WHERE condition;

Find the SQL statement below that is equal to the following: SELECT name
FROM customer WHERE state = 'VA';

1. SELECT name IN customer WHERE state IN ('VA');

2. SELECT name IN customer WHERE state = 'VA';

3. SELECT name IN customer WHERE state = 'V';

4. SELECT name FROM customer WHERE state IN ('VA');

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4. SELECT name FROM customer WHERE state IN ('VA');

Given these contents of the Customers table:

Id Name ReferredBy
1 John Doe NULL
2 Jane Smith NULL
3 Anne Jenkins 2
4 Eric Branford NULL
5 Pat Richards 1
6 Alice Barnes 2

Here is a query written to return the list of customers not referred by

Jane Smith:

SELECT Name FROM Customers WHERE ReferredBy <> 2;

What will be the result of the query? Why? What would be a better way
to writetoit?
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®

Although there are 4 customers not referred by Jane Smith (including Jane Smith herself),
the query will only return one: Pat Richards. All the customers who were referred by nobody
at all (and therefore have NULL in their ReferredBy column) don’t show up. But certainly
those customers weren’t referred by Jane Smith, and certainly NULL is not equal to 2, so
why didn’t they show up?

SQL Server uses three-valued logic, which can be troublesome for programmers
accustomed to the more satisfying two-valued logic (TRUE or FALSE) most programming
languages use. In most languages, if you were presented with two predicates: ReferredBy =
2 and ReferredBy <> 2, you would expect one of them to be true and one of them to be
false, given the same value of ReferredBy. In SQL Server, however, if ReferredBy is NULL,
neither of them are true and neither of them are false. Anything compared to NULL
evaluates to the third value in three-valued logic: UNKNOWN.

The query should be written in one of two ways:

SELECT Name FROM Customers WHERE ReferredBy IS NULL OR ReferredBy <> 2

…or:

SELECT Name FROM Customers WHERE ISNULL(ReferredBy, 0) <> 2; -- (Or COALESCE() )

Watch out for the following, though!

SELECT Name FROM Customers WHERE ReferredBy = NULL OR ReferredBy <> 2

This will return the same faulty set as the original. Why? We already covered that: Anything
compared to NULL evaluates to the third value in the three-valued logic: UNKNOWN. That
“anything” includes NULL itself! That’s why SQL Server provides the IS NULL and IS NOT
NULL operators to specifically check for NULL. Those particular operators will always
evaluate to true or false.

Even if a candidate doesn’t have a great amount of experience with SQL Server, diving into
th i t i i f th l dl i i l i d i di ti f h th th

Given a table TBL with a field Nmbr that has rows with the following
values:

1, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1

Write a query to add 2 where Nmbr is 0 and add 3 where Nmbr is 1.

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This can be®done as follows:

update TBL set Nmbr = case when Nmbr = 0 then Nmbr+2 else Nmbr+3 end;

Suppose we have a Customer table containing the following data:

CustomerID CustomerName
1 Prashant Kaurav
2 Ashish Jha
3 Ankit Varma
4 Vineet Kumar
5 Rahul Kumar

Write a single SQL statement to concatenate all the customer names

into the following single semicolon-separated string:

Prashant Kaurav; Ashish Jha; Ankit Varma; Vineet Kumar; Rahul Kumar

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SELECT CustomerName+ '; '

From Customer
For XML PATH('')

This is close, but will have an undesired trailing ; . One way of fixing that could be:

SELECT top 1
LTRIM(STUFF((SELECT &#39;; &#39; + c1.CustomerName FROM Customer c1 FOR XML PATH (&
from Customer c2;

In PostgreSQL one can also use this syntax to achieve the fully correct result:

SELECT array_to_string(array_agg(CustomerName), '; '::text)

FROM Customer

How do you get the Nth-highest salary from the Employee table without
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a subquery or CTE?
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SELECT salary from Employee order by salary DESC LIMIT 2,1

This will give the third-highest salary from the Employee table. Accordingly we can find out
Nth salary using LIMIT (N-1),1 .

But MS SQL Server doesn’t support that syntax, so in that case:

SELECT salary from Employee order by salary DESC

OFFSET 2 ROWS
FETCH NEXT 1 ROW ONLY

OFFSET ’s parameter corresponds to the (N-1) above.

How to find a duplicate record?

1. duplicate records with one field

2. duplicate records with more than one field

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1. duplicate records with one field

SELECT name, COUNT(email)

FROM users
GROUP BY email
HAVING COUNT(email) > 1

2. duplicate records with more than one field

SELECT name, email, COUNT(*)

FROM users
GROUP BY name, email
HAVING COUNT(*) > 1

Considering the database schema displayed in the SQLServer-style

diagram below, write a SQL query to return a list of all the invoices. For
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each invoice, show theagree to ourID,
Invoice Cookie
thePolicy.
billing date, the customer’s name,
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and the name of the customer who referred that customer (if any). The
list should
® be ordered by billing date.

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SELECT i.Id, i.BillingDate, c.Name, r.Name AS ReferredByName

FROM Invoices i
JOIN Customers c ON i.CustomerId = c.Id
LEFT JOIN Customers r ON c.ReferredBy = r.Id
ORDER BY i.BillingDate;

This question simply tests the candidate’s ability take a plain-English requirement and write
a corresponding SQL query. There is nothing tricky in this one, it just covers the basics:

Did the candidate remember to use a LEFT JOIN instead of an inner JOIN when joining
the customer table for the referring customer name? If not, any invoices by customers
not referred by somebody will be left out altogether.

Did the candidate alias the tables in the JOIN? Most experienced T-SQL programmers
always do this, because repeating the full table name each time it needs to be
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tedious to our
quickly. Cookie
In this case,Policy. Got it
the query would actually break if at least

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the Customer table wasn’t aliased, because it is referenced twice in different contexts
(once as® the table which contains the name of the invoiced customer, and once as the
table which contains the name of the referring customer).

Did the candidate disambiguate the Id and Name columns in the SELECT? Again, this is
something most experienced programmers do automatically, whether or not there
would be a conflict. And again, in this case there would be a conflict, so the query would
break if the candidate neglected to do so.

Note that this query will not return Invoices that do not have an associated Customer. This
may be the correct behavior for most cases (e.g., it is guaranteed that every Invoice is
associated with a Customer, or unmatched Invoices are not of interest). However, in order to
guarantee that all Invoices are returned no matter what, the Invoices table should be joined
with Customers using LEFT JOIN:

SELECT i.Id, i.BillingDate, c.Name, r.Name AS ReferredByName

FROM Invoices i
LEFT JOIN Customers c ON i.CustomerId = c.Id

* There is more to interviewing than tricky technical questions, so these are intended merely as a guide. Not
every “A” candidate worth hiring will be able to answer them all, nor does answering them all guarantee an “A”
candidate. At the end of the day, hiring remains an art, a science — and a lot of work.

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Vedansh Garg
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