SQL Interview Questions and Answers :

What is the difference between oracle,sql and sql server ?

Oracle is based on RDBMS. SQL is Structured Query Language. SQL Server is another tool for RDBMS provided by MicroSoft.

why you need indexing ? where that is stroed and what you mean by schema object? For what purpose we are using view? We cant create an Index on Index.. Index is stoed in user_index table.Every object that has been created on Schema is Schema Object like Table,View etc.If we want to share the particular data to various users we have to use the virtual table for the Base table...So tht is a view. indexing is used for faster search or to retrieve data faster from various table. Schema containing set of tables, basically schema means logical separation of the database. View is crated for faster retrieval of data. It's customized virtual table. we can create a single view of multiple tables. Only the drawback is..view needs to be get refreshed for retrieving updated data. Difference between Store Procedure and Trigger?

we can call stored procedure explicitly. but trigger is automatically invoked when the action defined in trigger is done. ex: create trigger after Insert on this trigger invoked after we insert something on that table. Stored procedure can't be inactive but trigger can be Inactive. Triggers are used to initiate a particular activity after fulfilling certain condition.It need to define and can be enable and disable according to need.

What is the advantage to use trigger in your PL? Triggers are fired implicitly on the tables/views on which they are created. There are various advantages of using a trigger. Some of them are:

Suppose we need to validate a DML statement(insert/Update/Delete) that modifies a table then we can write a trigger on the table that gets fired implicitly whenever DML statement is executed on that table. Another reason of using triggers can be for automatic updation of one or more tables whenever a DML/DDL statement is executed for the table on which the trigger is created. Triggers can be used to enforce constraints. For eg : Any insert/update/ Delete statements should not be allowed on a particular table after office hours. For enforcing this constraint Triggers should be used. Triggers can be used to publish information about database events to subscribers. Database event can be a system event like Database startup or shutdown or it can be a user even like User loggin in or user logoff.

What the difference between UNION and UNIONALL?

Union will remove the duplicate rows from the result set while Union all does'nt. What is the difference between TRUNCATE and DELETE commands? Both will result in deleting all the rows in the table .TRUNCATE call cannot be rolled back as it is a DDL command and all memory space for that table is released back to the server. TRUNCATE is much faster.Whereas DELETE call is an DML command and can be rolled back. Which system table contains information on constraints on all the tables created ? yes, USER_CONSTRAINTS, system table contains information on constraints on all the tables created Explain normalization ? Normalisation means refining the redundancy and maintain stablisation. there are four types of normalisation : first normal forms, second normal forms, third normal forms and fourth Normal forms. How to find out the database name from SQL*PLUS command prompt? Select * from global_name; This will give the datbase name which u r currently connected to..... What is the difference between SQL and SQL Server ? SQLServer is an RDBMS just like oracle,DB2 from Microsoft whereas Structured Query Language (SQL), pronounced "sequel", is a language that provides an interface to relational database systems. It was developed by IBM in the 1970s for use in System R. SQL is a de facto standard, as well as an ISO and ANSI standard. SQL is used to perform various operations on RDBMS. What is diffrence between Co-related sub query and nested sub query? Correlated subquery runs once for each row selected by the outer query. It contains a reference to a value from the row selected by the outer query. Nested subquery runs only once for the entire nesting (outer) query. It does not contain any reference to the outer query row. For example, Correlated Subquery: select e1.empname, e1.basicsal, e1.deptno from emp e1 where e1.basicsal = (select max(basicsal) from emp e2 where e2.deptno = e1.deptno) Nested Subquery: select empname, basicsal, deptno from emp where (deptno, basicsal) in (select deptno, max(basicsal) from emp group by deptno) WHAT OPERATOR PERFORMS PATTERN MATCHING? Pattern matching operator is LIKE and it has to used with two attributes 1. % and 2. _ ( underscore ) % means matches zero or more characters and under score means mathing exactly one character

1)What is difference between Oracle and MS Access? 2) What are disadvantages in Oracle and MS Access? 3) What are feratures&advantages in Oracle and MS Access? Oracle's features for distributed transactions, materialized views and replication are not available with MS Access. These features enable Oracle to efficiently store data for multinational companies across the globe. Also these features increase scalability of applications based on Oracle. What is database? A database is a collection of data that is organized so that itscontents can easily be accessed, managed and updated. open this url : http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/d/database.html What is cluster.cluster index and non cluster index ? Clustered Index:- A Clustered index is a special type of index that reorders the way records in the table are physically stored. Therefore table may have only one clustered index.Non-Clustered Index:- A Non-Clustered index is a special type of index in which the logical order of the index does not match the physical stored order of the rows in the disk. The leaf nodes of a nonclustered index does not consists of the data pages. instead the leaf node contains index rows. How can i hide a particular table name of our schema? you can hide the table name by creating synonyms. e.g) you can create a synonym y for table x create synonym y for x; What is difference between DBMS and RDBMS? The main difference of DBMS & RDBMS is RDBMS have Normalization. Normalization means to refining the redundant and maintain the stablization. the DBMS hasn't normalization concept. What are the advantages and disadvantages of primary key and foreign key in SQL? Primary key Advantages 1) It is a unique key on which all the other candidate keys are functionally dependent Disadvantage 1) There can be more than one keys on which all the other attributes are dependent on. Foreign Key Advantage 1)It allows refrencing another table using the primary key for the other table Which date function is used to find the difference between two dates? datediff for Eg: select datediff (dd,'2-06-2007','7-06-2007') output is 5 Q. What is the value of comm & sal after executing the following query if the initial value of sal is 10000? UPDATE EMP SET SAL = SAL + 1000, COMM = SAL*0.1;

sal = 11000, comm = 1000 . Q. Why does the following comm& give a compilation error? DROP TABLE &TABLE_NAME; Variable names should start with an alphabet. Here the table name starts with an '&' symbol. Q. What is the advantage of specifying WITH GRANT OPTION in the GRANT comm& in sql? The privilege receiver can further grant the privileges he/she has obtained from the owner to any other user. Q. What is the use of DESC in SQL? Answer : DESC has two purposes. It is used to describe a schema as well as to retrieve rows from table in descending order. Explanation : The query SELECT * FROM EMP ORDER BY ENAME DESC will display the output sorted on ENAME in descending order. Q. What is the use of CASCADE CONSTRAINTS? When this clause is used with the DROP comm&, a parent table can be dropped even when a child table exists.

SQL Queries
EMP

23/2/2011

EMPNO (NOT NULL , NUMBER(4)), ENAME (VARCHAR2(10)), JOB (VARCHAR2(9)), MGR (NUMBER(4)), HIREDATE (DATE), SAL (NUMBER(7,2)), COMM (NUMBER(7,2)), DEPTNO (NUMBER(2)) QUERIES List all the employees who have at least one person reporting to them. List the employee details if and only if more than 10 employees are present in department no 10. List the name of the employees with their immediate higher authority. List all the employees who do not manage any one. List the employee details whose salary is greater than the lowest salary of an employee belonging to deptno 20. List the details of the employee earning more than the highest paid manager. List the highest salary paid for each job. Find the most recently hired employee in each department. In which year did most people join the company? Display the year and the number of employees. Which department has the highest annual remuneration bill? Write a query to display a * against the row of the most recently hired employee. Write a correlated sub-query to list out the employees who earn more than the average salary of their department. Find the nth maximum salary. Select the duplicate records (Records, which are inserted, that already exist) in the EMP table. Write a query to list the length of service of the employees (of the form n years and m months). SQL interview questions and answers 1. What is the difference between a "where" clause and a "having" clause? 2. What structure can you implement for the database to speed up table reads?

3. What are the tradeoffs with having indexes? 4. What is a "join"? 5. What is "normalization"? "Denormalization"? Why do you sometimes want to denormalize? 6. What is a "constraint"? 7. What types of index data structures can you have? 8. What is a "primary key"? 9. What is a "functional dependency"? How does it relate to database table design? 10.What is a "trigger"? 11.Why can a "group by" or "order by" clause be expensive to process? 12.What is a SQL view? KEYS: 1. SELECT DISTINCT(A.ENAME) FROM EMP A, EMP B WHERE A.EMPNO = B.MGR; or SELECT ENAME FROM EMP WHERE EMPNO IN (SELECT MGR FROM EMP); 2. SELECT * FROM EMP WHERE DEPTNO IN (SELECT DEPTNO FROM EMP GROUP BY DEPTNO HAVING COUNT(EMPNO)>10 AND DEPTNO=10); 3. SELECT A.ENAME "EMPLOYEE", B.ENAME "REPORTS TO" FROM EMP A, EMP B WHERE A.MGR=B.EMPNO; 4. SELECT * FROM EMP WHERE EMPNO IN ( SELECT EMPNO FROM EMP MINUS SELECT MGR FROM EMP); 5. SELECT * FROM EMP WHERE SAL > ( SELECT MIN(SAL) FROM EMP GROUP BY DEPTNO HAVING DEPTNO=20); 6. SELECT * FROM EMP WHERE SAL > ( SELECT MAX(SAL) FROM EMP GROUP BY JOB HAVING JOB = 'MANAGER' ); 7. SELECT JOB, MAX(SAL) FROM EMP GROUP BY JOB; 8. SELECT * FROM EMP WHERE (DEPTNO, HIREDATE) IN (SELECT DEPTNO, MAX(HIREDATE) FROM EMP GROUP BY DEPTNO); 9. SELECT TO_CHAR(HIREDATE,'YYYY') "YEAR", COUNT(EMPNO) "NO. OF EMPLOYEES" FROM EMP GROUP BY TO_CHAR(HIREDATE,'YYYY') HAVING COUNT(EMPNO) = (SELECT MAX(COUNT(EMPNO)) FROM EMP GROUP BY TO_CHAR(HIREDATE,'YYYY')); 10. SELECT DEPTNO, LPAD(SUM(12*(SAL+NVL(COMM,0))),15) "COMPENSATION" FROM EMP GROUP BY DEPTNO HAVING SUM( 12*(SAL+NVL(COMM,0))) = (SELECT MAX(SUM(12*(SAL+NVL(COMM,0)))) FROM EMP GROUP BY DEPTNO); 11. SELECT ENAME, HIREDATE, LPAD('*',8) "RECENTLY HIRED" FROM EMP WHERE HIREDATE = (SELECT MAX(HIREDATE) FROM EMP) UNION SELECT ENAME NAME, HIREDATE, LPAD(' ',15) "RECENTLY HIRED" FROM EMP WHERE HIREDATE != (SELECT MAX(HIREDATE) FROM EMP); 12. SELECT ENAME,SAL FROM EMP E WHERE SAL > (SELECT AVG(SAL) FROM EMP F

WHERE E.DEPTNO = F.DEPTNO); 13. SELECT ENAME, SAL FROM EMP A WHERE &N = (SELECT COUNT (DISTINCT(SAL)) FROM EMP B WHERE A.SAL<=B.SAL); 14. SELECT * FROM EMP A WHERE A.EMPNO IN (SELECT EMPNO FROM EMP GROUP BY EMPNO HAVING COUNT(EMPNO)>1) AND A.ROWID!=MIN (ROWID)); 15. SELECT ENAME "EMPLOYEE",TO_CHAR(TRUNC(MONTHS_BETWEEN(SYSDATE,HIREDATE)/12))||' YEARS '|| TO_CHAR(TRUNC(MOD(MONTHS_BETWEEN (SYSDATE, HIREDATE),12)))||' MONTHS ' "LENGTH OF SERVICE" FROM EMP;

SQL interview questions and answers

13.What is the difference between a "where" clause and a "having" clause? - "Where" is a kind of restiriction statement. You use where clause to restrict all the data from DB.Where clause is using before result retrieving. But Having clause is using after retrieving the data.Having clause is a kind of filtering command. 14.What is the basic form of a SQL statement to read data out of a table? The basic form to read data out of table is SELECT * FROM table_name; An answer: SELECT * FROM table_name WHERE xyz= whatever; cannot be called basic form because of WHERE clause. 15.What structure can you implement for the database to speed up table reads? - Follow the rules of DB tuning we have to: 1] properly use indexes ( different types of indexes) 2] properly locate different DB objects across different tablespaces, files and so on.3] create a special space (tablespace) to locate some of the data with special datatype ( for example CLOB, LOB and ) 16.What are the tradeoffs with having indexes? - 1. Faster selects, slower updates. 2. Extra storage space to store indexes. Updates are slower because in addition to updating the table you have to update the index. 17.What is a "join"? - join used to connect two or more tables logically with or without common field. 18.What is "normalization"? "Denormalization"? Why do you sometimes want to denormalize? - Normalizing data means eliminating redundant information from a table and organizing the data so that future changes to the table are easier. Denormalization means allowing redundancy in a table. The main benefit of denormalization is improved performance with simplified data retrieval and manipulation. This is done by reduction in the number of joins needed for data processing.

19.What is a "constraint"? - A constraint allows you to apply simple referential integrity checks to a table. There are four primary types of constraints that are currently supported by SQL Server: PRIMARY/UNIQUE - enforces uniqueness of a particular table column. DEFAULT - specifies a default value for a column in case an insert operation does not provide one. FOREIGN KEY validates that every value in a column exists in a column of another table. CHECK - checks that every value stored in a column is in some specified list. Each type of constraint performs a specific type of action. Default is not a constraint. NOT NULL is one more constraint which does not allow values in the specific column to be null. And also it the only constraint which is not a table level constraint. 20.What types of index data structures can you have? - An index helps to faster search values in tables. The three most commonly used index-types are: - B-Tree: builds a tree of possible values with a list of row IDs that have the leaf value. Needs a lot of space and is the default index type for most databases. - Bitmap: string of bits for each possible value of the column. Each bit string has one bit for each row. Needs only few space and is very fast. (however, domain of value cannot be large, e.g. SEX(m,f); degree(BS,MS,PHD) - Hash: A hashing algorithm is used to assign a set of characters to represent a text string such as a composite of keys or partial keys, and compresses the underlying data. Takes longer to build and is supported by relatively few databases. 21.What is a "primary key"? - A PRIMARY INDEX or PRIMARY KEY is something which comes mainly from database theory. From its behavior is almost the same as an UNIQUE INDEX, i.e. there may only be one of each value in this column. If you call such an INDEX PRIMARY instead of UNIQUE, you say something about your table design, which I am not able to explain in few words. Primary Key is a type of a constraint enforcing uniqueness and data integrity for each row of a table. All columns participating in a primary key constraint must possess the NOT NULL property. 22.What is a "functional dependency"? How does it relate to database table design? - Functional dependency relates to how one object depends upon the other in the database. for example, procedure/function sp2 may be called by procedure sp1. Then we say that sp1 has functional dependency on sp2. 23.What is a "trigger"? - Triggers are stored procedures created in order to enforce integrity rules in a database. A trigger is executed every time a datamodification operation occurs (i.e., insert, update or delete). Triggers are executed automatically on occurance of one of the data-modification operations. A trigger is a database object directly associated with a particular table. It fires whenever a specific statement/type of statement is issued against that table. The types of statements are insert,update,delete and query statements. Basically, trigger is a set of SQL statements A trigger is a solution to the restrictions of a constraint. For instance: 1.A database column cannot carry PSEUDO columns as criteria where a trigger can. 2. A database constraint cannot refer old and new values for a row where a trigger can.

24.Why can a "group by" or "order by" clause be expensive to process? Processing of "group by" or "order by" clause often requires creation of Temporary tables to process the results of the query. Which depending of the result set can be very expensive. 25.What is "index covering" of a query? - Index covering means that "Data can be found only using indexes, without touching the tables" 26.What is a SQL view? - An output of a query can be stored as a view. View acts like small table which meets our criterion. View is a precomplied SQL query which is used to select data from one or more tables. A view is like a table but it doesnt physically take any space. View is a good way to present data in a particular format if you use that query quite often. View can also be used to restrict users from accessing the tables directly.