SQL interview questions and answers

1. What are two methods of retrieving SQL?

There are two methods to retrieving Sql 1) Select statement. 2) Cursor.

2. What cursor type do you use to retrieve multiple recordsets?
we are using explicit cursor to retrieve multiple row

3. 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. 4. 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. 5. 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 ) 6. 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. 7. What is a "join"? - join used to connect two or more tables logically with or without common field. 8. 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. 9. 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
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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. 10. 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. 11. 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. 12. 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. 13. 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 data-modification 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. 14. 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. 15. What is "index covering" of a query? - Index covering means that "Data can be found only using indexes, without touching the tables" 16. What types of join algorithms can you have? 17. 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 doesn t 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. Q1 - Write a query to find the total number of rows in a table A1 - Select count(*) from t_employee; Q2 - Write a query to eliminate duplicate records in the results of a table A2 - Select distinct * from t_employee; Q3 - Write a query to insert a record into a table A3 - Insert into t_employee values ('empid35','Barack','Obama'); Q4 - Write a query to delete a record from a table A4 - delete from t_employee where id='empid35'; Q5 - Write a query to display a row using index A5 - For this, the indexed column of the table needs to be set as a parameter in the where clause select * from t_employee where id='43'; Q6 - Write a query to fetch the highest record in a table, based on a record, say salary field in the t_salary table A6 - Select max(salary) from t_salary; Q7 - Write a query to fetch the first 3 characters of the field designation from the table t_employee A7 - Select substr(designation,1,3) from t_employee; -- Note here that the substr function has been used. Q8 - Write a query to concatenate two fields, say Designation and Department belonging to a table t_employee Select Designation + + Department from t_employee;

Q9 -What is the difference between UNION and UNION ALL in SQL?A9 - UNION is an SQL keyword used to merge the results of two or more tables using a Select statement,
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containing the same fields, with removed duplicate values. UNION ALL does the same, however it persists duplicate values. Q10 - If there are 4 SQL Select statements joined using Union and Union All, how many times should a Union be used to remove duplicate rows? A10 - One time. Q11 - What is the difference between IN and BETWEEN, that are used inside a WHERE clause? A11 - The BETWEEN clause is used to fetch a range of values, whereas the IN clause fetches data from a list of specified values. Q12 - Explain the use of the LIKE keyword used in the WHERE clause? Explain wildcard characters in SQL. A12 - LIKE is used for partial string matches. The symbol % ( for a string of any character ) and _ (for any single character ) are the two wild card characters used in SQL. Q13 - What is the need to use a LIKE statement? A13 - When a partial search is required in a scencario, where for instance, you need to find all employees with the last name having the sequence of characters "gat", then you may use the following query, to match a search criteria: Select empid, firstname, lastname from t_employee where lastname like %gats% This might search all employees with last name containing the character sequence 'gats' like Gates, Gatsby, Gatsburg, Sogatsky, etc. % is used to represent remaining all characters in the name. This query fetches all records contains gats in the e middle of the string. Q14 - Explain the use of the by GROUP BY and the HAVING clause. A14 - The GROUP BY partitions the selected rows on the distinct values of the column on which the group by has been done. In tandem, the HAVING selects groups which match the criteria specified. Q15 - In a table t_employee, the department column is nullable. Write a query to fetch employees which are not assigned a department yet. A11. Select empid, firstname, lastname from t_employee where department is null;

Q16 -What are the large objects supported by oracle and db2? What are the large objects supported in MS SQL? What is normalization? Explain different levels of normalization? Check out the article Q100139 from Microsoft knowledge base and of course, there's much more information available in the net. It will be a good idea to get a hold of any RDBMS fundamentals text book, especially the one by C. J. Date. Most of the times, it will be okay if you can explain till third normal form. What is de-normalization and when would you go for it? As the name indicates, de-normalization is the reverse process of normalization. It is the controlled introduction of redundancy in to the database design. It helps improve the query performance as the number of joins could be reduced. How do you implement one-to-one, one-to-many and many-to-many relationships while designing tables? One-to-One relationship can be implemented as a single table and rarely as two tables with primary and foreign key relationships. One-to-Many relationships are implemented by splitting the data into two tables with primary key and foreign key relationships. Many-to-Many relationships are implemented using a junction table with the keys from both the tables forming the composite primary key of the junction table. It will be a good idea to read up a database designing fundamentals text book. What's the difference between a primary key and a unique key? Both primary key and unique enforce uniqueness of the column on which they are defined. But by default primary key creates a clustered index on the column, where are unique creates a non-clustered index by default. Another major difference is that, primary key does not allow NULLs, but unique key allows one NULL only. What are user defined data types and when you should go for them? User defined data types let you extend the base SQL Server data types by providing a descriptive name, and format to the database. Take for example, in your database, there is a column called Flight_Num which appears in many tables. In all these tables it should be varchar(8). In this case you could create a user defined data type called Flight_num_type of varchar(8) and use it across all your tables.

What is bit data type and what's the information that can be stored inside a bit column? Bit data type is used to store Boolean information like 1 or 0 (true or false). Until SQL Server 6.5 bit data type could hold either a 1 or 0 and there was no support for NULL. But from SQL Server 7.0 onwards, bit data type can represent a third state, which is NULL. Define candidate key, alternate key, composite key. A candidate key is one that can identify each row of a table uniquely. Generally a candidate key becomes the primary key of the table. If the table has more than one candidate key, one of them will become the primary key, and the rest are called alternate keys.A key formed by combining at least two or more columns is called composite key. What are defaults? Is there a column to which a default cannot be bound? A default is a value that will be used by a column, if no value is supplied to that column while inserting data. IDENTITY columns and timestamp columns can't have defaults bound to them. See CREATE DEFAULT in books online. What is a transaction and what are ACID properties? A transaction is a logical unit of work in which, all the steps must be performed or none. ACID stands for Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability. These are the properties of a transaction. For more information and explanation of these properties, see SQL Server books online or any RDBMS fundamentals text book. Explain different isolation levels An isolation level determines the degree of isolation of data between concurrent transactions. The default SQL Server isolation level is Read Committed. Here are the other isolation levels (in the ascending order of isolation): Read Uncommitted, Read Committed, Repeatable Read, Serializable. See SQL Server books online for an explanation of the isolation levels. Be sure to read about SET TRANSACTION ISOLATION LEVEL, which lets you customize the isolation level at the connection level.
CREATE INDEX myIndex ON myTable (myColumn)

What type of Index will get created after executing the above statement? Non-clustered index. Important thing to note: By default a clustered index gets created on the primary key, unless specified otherwise.

What is the maximum size of a row?8060 bytes. Do not be surprised with questions like 'What is the maximum number of columns per table'. Check out SQL Server books online for the page titled: "Maximum Capacity Specifications". Explain Active/Active and Active/Passive cluster configurations Hopefully you have experience setting up cluster servers. But if you do not, at least be familiar with the way clustering works and the two clustering configurations Active/Active and Active/Passive. SQL Server books online has enough information on this topic and there is a good white paper available on Microsoft site. Explain the architecture of SQL Server This is a very important question and you better be able to answer it if consider yourself a DBA. SQL Server books online is the best place to read about SQL Server architecture. Read up the chapter dedicated to SQL Server Architecture. What is Lock Escalation? Lock escalation is the process of converting a lot of low level locks (like row locks, page locks) into higher level locks (like table locks). Every lock is a memory structure too many locks would mean, more memory being occupied by locks. To prevent this from happening, SQL Server escalates the many fine-grain locks to fewer coarse-grain locks. Lock escalation threshold was definable in SQL Server 6.5, but from SQL Server 7.0 onwards it's dynamically managed by SQL Server. What's the difference between DELETE TABLE and TRUNCATE TABLE commands?
DELETE TABLE is a logged operation, so the deletion of each row gets logged in the transaction log, which makes it slow. TRUNCATE TABLE also deletes all the rows in a table, but it will not log

the deletion of each row, instead it logs the de-allocation of the data pages of the table, which makes it faster. Of course, TRUNCATE TABLE can be rolled back. Explain the storage models of OLAP Check out MOLAP, ROLAP and HOLAP in SQL Server books online for more information.What are the new features introduced in SQL Server 2000 (or the latest release of SQL Server at the time of your interview)? What changed between the previous version of SQL Server and the current version? This question is generally asked to see how current is your knowledge. Generally there is a section in the beginning of the books online titled "What's New", which has all such information. Of course, reading just that is not enough, you should have tried those things to

better answer the questions. Also check out the section titled "Backward Compatibility" in books online which talks about the changes that have taken place in the new version. What are constraints? Explain different types of constraints. Constraints enable the RDBMS enforce the integrity of the database automatically, without needing you to create triggers, rule or defaults.Types of constraints: NOT NULL, CHECK, UNIQUE, PRIMARY KEY, FOREIGN KEYFor an explanation of these constraints see books online for the pages titled: "Constraints" and "CREATE TABLE", "ALTER TABLE" What is an index? What are the types of indexes? How many clustered indexes can be created on a table? I create a separate index on each column of a table. what are the advantages and disadvantages of this approach? Indexes in SQL Server are similar to the indexes in books. They help SQL Server retrieve the data quicker. Indexes are of two types. Clustered indexes and non-clustered indexes. When you create a clustered index on a table, all the rows in the table are stored in the order of the clustered index key. So, there can be only one clustered index per table. Non-clustered indexes have their own storage separate from the table data storage. Non-clustered indexes are stored as B-tree structures (so do clustered indexes), with the leaf level nodes having the index key and it's row locater. The row located could be the RID or the Clustered index key, depending up on the absence or presence of clustered index on the table. If you create an index on each column of a table, it improves the query performance, as the query optimizer can choose from all the existing indexes to come up with an efficient execution plan. At the same time, data modification operations (such as INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE) will become slow, as every time data changes in the table, all the indexes need to be updated. Another disadvantage is that, indexes need disk space, the more indexes you have, more disk space is used. What is RAID and what are different types of RAID configurations?
RAID stands for Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks, used to provide fault tolerance to database servers. There are six RAID levels 0 through 5 offering different levels of performance, fault tolerance. MSDN has some information about RAID levels and for detailed information, check

out the RAID advisory board's homepage What are the steps you will take to improve performance of a poor performing query? This is a very open ended question and there could be a lot of reasons behind the poor performance of a query. But some general issues that you could talk about would be: No indexes, table scans, missing or out of date statistics, blocking, excess recompilations of stored
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procedures, procedures and triggers without SET NOCOUNT ON, poorly written query with unnecessarily complicated joins, too much normalization, excess usage of cursors and temporary tables. Some of the tools/ways that help you troubleshooting performance problems are:
y y y y y y SET SHOWPLAN_ALL ON, SET SHOWPLAN_TEXT ON, SET STATISTICS IO ON,

SQL Server Profiler, Windows NT /2000 Performance monitor, Graphical execution plan in Query Analyzer.

What are the steps you will take, if you are tasked with securing an SQL Server? Again this is another open ended question. Here are some things you could talk about: Preferring NT authentication, using server, database and application roles to control access to the data, securing the physical database files using NTFS permissions, using an unguessable SA password, restricting physical access to the SQL Server, renaming the Administrator account on the SQL Server computer, disabling the Guest account, enabling auditing, using multi-protocol encryption, setting up SSL, setting up firewalls, isolating SQL Server from the web server etc. What is a deadlock and what is a live lock? How will you go about resolving deadlocks? Deadlock is a situation when two processes, each having a lock on one piece of data, attempt to acquire a lock on the other's piece. Each process would wait indefinitely for the other to release the lock, unless one of the user processes is terminated. SQL Server detects deadlocks and terminates one user's process. A livelock is one, where a request for an exclusive lock is repeatedly denied because a series of overlapping shared locks keeps interfering. SQL Server detects the situation after four denials and refuses further shared locks. A livelock also occurs when read transactions monopolize a table or page, forcing a write transaction to wait indefinitely. What is blocking and how would you troubleshoot it? Blocking happens when one connection from an application holds a lock and a second connection requires a conflicting lock type. This forces the second connection to wait, blocked on the first. Explain CREATE DATABASE syntax Many of us are used to creating databases from the Enterprise Manager or by just issuing the command: CREATE DATABASE MyDB.
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But what if you have to create a database with two file groups, one on drive C and the other on drive D with log on drive E with an initial size of 600 MB and with a growth factor of 15%? That's why being a DBA you should be familiar with the CREATE DATABASE syntax. Check out SQL Server books online for more information. How to restart SQL Server in single user mode? How to start SQL Server in minimal configuration mode? SQL Server can be started from command line, using the SQLSERVR.EXE. This EXE has some very important parameters with which a DBA should be familiar with. -m is used for starting SQL Server in single user mode and -f is used to start the SQL Server in minimal configuration mode. Check out SQL Server books online for more parameters and their explanations. As a part of your job, what are the DBCC commands that you commonly use for database maintenance?
DBCC CHECKDB, DBCC CHECKTABLE, DBCC CHECKCATALOG, DBCC CHECKALLOC, DBCC SHOWCONTIG, DBCC SHRINKDATABASE, DBCC SHRINKFILE etc.

But there are a whole load of DBCC commands which are very useful for DBAs. Check out SQL Server books online for more information. What are statistics, under what circumstances they go out of date, how do you update them? Statistics determine the selectivity of the indexes. If an indexed column has unique values then the selectivity of that index is more, as opposed to an index with non-unique values. Query optimizer uses these indexes in determining whether to choose an index or not while executing a query. Some situations under which you should update statistics: 1. If there is significant change in the key values in the index 2. If a large amount of data in an indexed column has been added, changed, or removed (that is, if the distribution of key values has changed), or the table has been truncated using the TRUNCATE TABLE statement and then repopulated 3. Database is upgraded from a previous version 4. Look up SQL Server books online for the following commands:
UPDATE STATISTICS, STATS_DATE, DBCC SHOW_STATISTICS,

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CREATE STATISTICS, DROP STATISTICS, sp_autostats, sp_createstats, sp_updatestats

What are the different ways of moving data/databases between servers and databases in SQL Server? There are lots of options available, you have to choose your option depending upon your requirements. Some of the options you have are:
BACKUP/RESTORE, Detaching and attaching databases, Replication, DTS, BCP, logshipping, INSERT...SELECT,SELECT...INTO, creating INSERT scripts to generate data.

Explain different types of BACKUPs available in SQL Server? Given a particular scenario, how would you go about choosing a backup plan? Types of backups you can create in SQL Sever 7.0+ are Full database backup, differential database backup, transaction log backup, filegroup backup. Check out the BACKUP and RESTORE commands in SQL Server books online. Be prepared to write the commands in your interview. Books online also has information on detailed backup/restore architecture and when one should go for a particular kind of backup. What is database replication? What are the different types of replication you can set up in SQL Server? Replication is the process of copying/moving data between databases on the same or different servers. SQL Server supports the following types of replication scenarios: * Snapshot replication * Transactional replication (with immediate updating subscribers, with queued updating subscribers) * Merge replication See SQL Server books online for in-depth coverage on replication. Be prepared to explain how different replication agents function, what are the main system tables used in replication etc. How to determine the service pack currently installed on SQL Server? The global variable @@Version stores the build number of the sqlservr.exe, which is used to determine the service pack installed. To know more about this process visit SQL Server service packs and versions.

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What are cursors? Explain different types of cursors. What are the disadvantages of cursors? How can you avoid cursors? Cursors allow row-by-row processing of the resultsets. Types of cursors:
Static, Dynamic, Forward-only, Keyset-driven.

Disadvantages of cursors: Each time you fetch a row from the cursor, it results in a network roundtrip, where as a normal SELECT query makes only one round trip, however large the resultset is. Cursors are also costly because they require more resources and temporary storage (results in more IO operations). Further, there are restrictions on the SELECT statements that can be used with some types of cursors. Most of the times, set based operations can be used instead of cursors. Here is an example: If you have to give a flat hike to your employees using the following criteria:
Salary between 30000 and 40000 -- 5000 hike Salary between 40000 and 55000 -- 7000 hike Salary between 55000 and 65000 -- 9000 hike

In this situation many developers tend to use a cursor, determine each employee's salary and update his salary according to the above formula. But the same can be achieved by multiple update statements or can be combined in a single UPDATE statement as shown below:
UPDATE tbl_emp SET salary = CASE WHEN salary BETWEEN 30000 AND 40000 THEN salary + 5000 WHEN salary BETWEEN 40000 AND 55000 THEN salary + 7000 WHEN salary BETWEEN 55000 AND 65000 THEN salary + 10000 END

Another situation in which developers tend to use cursors: You need to call a stored procedure when a column in a particular row meets certain condition. You don't have to use cursors for this. This can be achieved using WHILE loop, as long as there is a unique key to identify each row. Write down the general syntax for a SELECT statements covering all the options. Here's the basic syntax: (Also checkout SELECT in books online for advanced syntax).
SELECT select_list [INTO new_table_] FROM table_source

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[WHERE search_condition] [GROUP BY group_by__expression] [HAVING search_condition] [ORDER BY order__expression [ASC | DESC] ]

What is a join and explain different types of joins? Joins are used in queries to explain how different tables are related. Joins also let you select data from a table depending upon data from another table. Types of joins:
INNER JOINs, OUTER JOINs, CROSS JOINs OUTER JOINs are further classified as LEFT OUTER JOINS, RIGHT OUTER JOINS and FULL OUTER JOINS.

Can you have a nested transaction? Yes, very much. Check out BEGIN TRAN, COMMIT, ROLLBACK, SAVE TRAN and @@TRANCOUNT What is an extended stored procedure? Can you instantiate a COM object by using T-SQL? An extended stored procedure is a function within a DLL (written in a programming language like C, C++ using Open Data Services (ODS) API) that can be called from T-SQL, just the way we call normal stored procedures using the EXEC statement. See books online to learn how to create extended stored procedures and how to add them to SQL Server. Yes, you can instantiate a COM (written in languages like VB, VC++) object from T-SQL by using sp_OACreate stored procedure. What is the system function to get the current user's user id?
USER_ID(). Also check out other system functions like USER_NAME(), SYSTEM_USER, SESSION_USER, CURRENT_USER, USER, SUSER_SID(), HOST_NAME().

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What are triggers? How many triggers you can have on a table? How to invoke a trigger on demand? Triggers are special kind of stored procedures that get executed automatically when an INSERT, UPDATE or DELETE operation takes place on a table.In SQL Server 6.5 you could define only 3 triggers per table, one for INSERT, one for UPDATE and one for DELETE. From SQL Server 7.0 onwards, this restriction is gone, and you could create multiple triggers per each action. But in 7.0 there's no way to control the order in which the triggers fire. In SQL Server 2000 you could specify which trigger fires first or fires last using sp_settriggerorder Triggers cannot be invoked on demand. They get triggered only when an associated action (INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE) happens on the table on which they are defined. Triggers are generally used to implement business rules, auditing. Triggers can also be used to extend the referential integrity checks, but wherever possible, use constraints for this purpose, instead of triggers, as constraints are much faster. Till SQL Server 7.0, triggers fire only after the data modification operation happens. So in a way, they are called post triggers. But in SQL Server 2000 you could create pre triggers also. Search SQL Server 2000 books online for INSTEAD OF triggers. Also check out books online for 'inserted table', 'deleted table' and COLUMNS_UPDATED() There is a trigger defined for INSERT operations on a table, in an OLTP system. The trigger is written to instantiate a COM object and pass the newly inserted rows to it for some custom processing. What do you think of this implementation? Can this be implemented better? Instantiating COM objects is a time consuming process and since you are doing it from within a trigger, it slows down the data insertion process. Same is the case with sending emails from triggers. This scenario can be better implemented by logging all the necessary data into a separate table, and have a job which periodically checks this table and does the needful. What is a self join? Explain it with an example. Self join is just like any other join, except that two instances of the same table will be joined in the query. Here is an example: Employees table which contains rows for normal employees as well as managers. So, to find out the managers of all the employees, you need a self join.
CREATE TABLE emp ( empid int, mgrid int, empname char(10)

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)INSERT emp SELECT 1,2,'Vyas' INSERT emp SELECT 2,3,'Mohan' INSERT emp SELECT 3,NULL,'Shobha' INSERT emp SELECT 4,2,'Shridhar' INSERT emp SELECT 5,2,'Sourabh' SELECT t1.empname [Employee], t2.empname [Manager] FROM emp t1, emp t2 WHERE t1.mgrid = t2.empid

Here is an advanced query using a LEFT OUTER JOIN that even returns the employees without managers (super bosses)
SELECT t1.empname [Employee], COALESCE(t2.empname, 'No manager') [Manager] FROM emp t1 LEFT OUTER JOIN emp t2 ON t1.mgrid = t2.empid

A16 - In Oracle and DB2 BLOB , CLOB ( Binary Large Objects, Character Large Objects) are used. In MS SQL - the data types are image and varbinary. Q17 - Whats the capacity of the image data type in MS SQL? A17 - Variable-length binary data with a maximum length of 2^31 - 1 (2,147,483,647) bytes. Q18 - Whats the capacity of varbinary data type in MS SQL? A18 - Variable-length binary data with a maximum length of 8,000 bytes. Q19 - What s the difference between a primary key and a unique key? A19 - Both Primary key and Unique key enforce the uniqueness of a column on which they are defined. However, a Primary key does not allow nulls, whereas unique key allow nulls. Q20 - What are the different types of joins in SQL? INNER JOIN OUTER JOIN LEFT OUTER JOIN RIGHT OUTER JOIN FULL OUTER JOIN INNER JOIN Read here for more http://www.dotnetuncle.com/SQL/What-is-Join-in-SQL-types-of-joins.aspx
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Q21 - What is a Self join? A21 - A join created by joining two or more instances of a same table. Query: Select A.firstname , B.firstname from t_employee A, t_employee B where A.supervisor_id = B.employee_id; Q22 - What is a transaction and ACID? A22 - Transaction - A transaction is a logical unit of work. All steps must be committed or rolled back. ACID - Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation and Durability, these are the unique entities of a transaction. What is a Join in SQL? What are different types of Joins in SQL? Outer Join, Inner Join, Equi Join, Natural Join, Cross Join, Full Outer Join Join - A join in SQL is a clause that allows merging of records from one or more than one tables in a database. The records from the tables are fetched based on some values that are common to each. See code example below: Say we have 2 tables, T_EMPLOYEES and T_SALARY Select * from T_EMPLOYEES JOIN T_SALARY ON T_EMPLOYEES.EMP_ID = T_SALARY.EMP_ID; Consider the following 2 tables: T_SHOOTERS Name Gun_Type Ballu Balram 1 Ekgoli Shikari 2 Fauji Bhai 3 Thulla 4 Jackal 4 T_GUNTYPES Gun_Type Description 1 Katta Pt. 5 2 Desi Bandook Single Barrel 3 Rocket Launcher 4 Colt

Inner Join - in this type of join, every record in the tables being joined have a matching record. The condition based on which the records are matched is called the join predicate. Implicit Vs. Explicit Inner Joins - When the clause 'Inner Join' is used, it is said to be an explicit

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join. See code example below: SELECT * FROM t_shooters INNER JOIN t_guntypes ON t_shooters.gun_type = t_guntypes.gun_type; Above is an explicit inner join. The same can be achieved without using the 'inner join' clause like this: SELECT * FROM t_shooter, t_guntype WHERE t_shooters.gun_type = t_guntypes.gun_type; Above is an implicit inner join. Equi Join - This is a type of Inner Join. (It is also called a Theta Join). - It is a join where the equality '=' operator is used. In case an operator like '<' or '>' or any other operator is used, it is not an Equi Join. An Equi Join may be used by using equality operator or the Using clause. See code example below: SELECT T_SHOOTERS.NAME, GUN_TYPE, T_GUNTYPES.DESCRIPTION FROM T_SHOOTERS INNER JOIN T_GUNTYPES USING(GUN_TYPE); Natural Join - It is a type of Inner Join. It is a join where in the join predicate is based on all the column names that are common to both the tables being joined. See code example below: SELECT * From T_SHOOTERS NATURAL JOIN T_GUNTYPES; Results will be as below: Gun_Type T_Shooters.Name T_Guntypes.Description 1 Ballu Balram Katta Pt. 5 2 Ekgoli Shikari Desi Bandook Single Barrel 3 Fauji Bhai Rocket Launcher 4 Thulla Colt 5 Jackal Colt Cross Join - Also called Cartesian Join. It is the result of joining each row of a table with each row of the other table.

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Outer Join - In an Outer join, each record of a table does not really need to match with a record in the corresponding table. Outer joins maybe Left Outer Joins or Right Outher Joins. Outer Joins are always explicit. Left Outer Join - This join contains all records from the left table, and matching records in the other table. However, if there are no matching records in the other table, it will still return a result, where in the records of the other table will be NULL. Right Outer Join - This join fetches all records from the right table and only matching records from the left table. By saying left table, it means the table who's name is to the left of the Join Clause. See code example below: SELECT * FROM t_shooters LEFT OUTER JOIN t_guntypes ON t_shooters.gun_type = t_guntypes.gun_type; Full Outer Join - A full outer join merges the result fetched from Left and Right Outer joins. See code example below: SELECT * FROM t_shooters FULL OUTER JOIN t_guntypes ON t_shooters.gun_type = t_guntypes.gun_type;
(i) Finding the nth highest salary of an employee. Create a table named Employee_Test and insert some test data as:Collapse | Copy Code
CREATE TABLE Employee_Test ( Emp_ID INT Identity, Emp_name Varchar(100), Emp_Sal Decimal (10,2) ) INSERT INTO Employee_Test VALUES ('Anees',1000); INSERT INTO Employee_Test VALUES ('Rick',1200); INSERT INTO Employee_Test VALUES ('John',1100); INSERT INTO Employee_Test VALUES ('Stephen',1300); INSERT INTO Employee_Test VALUES ('Maria',1400);

It is very easy to find the highest salary as:Collapse | Copy Code

--Highest Salary select max(Emp_Sal) from Employee_Test

Now, if you are asked to find the 3rd highest salary, then the query is as:18

Collapse | Copy Code

--3rd Highest Salary select min(Emp_Sal) from Employee_Test where Emp_Sal in (select distinct top 3 Emp_Sal from Employee_Test order by Emp_Sal desc)

The result is as :- 1200 To find the nth highest salary, replace the top 3 with top n (n being an integer 1,2,3 etc.) Collapse | Copy Code
--nth Highest Salary select min(Emp_Sal) from Employee_Test where Emp_Sal in (select distinct top n Emp_Sal from Employee_Test order by Emp_Sal desc)

(ii) Finding TOP X records from each group Create a table named photo_test and insert some test data as :Collapse | Copy Code
create table photo_test ( pgm_main_Category_id int, pgm_sub_category_id int, file_path varchar(MAX) ) insert into photo_test values (17,15,'photo/bb1.jpg'); insert into photo_test values(17,16,'photo/cricket1.jpg'); insert into photo_test values(17,17,'photo/base1.jpg'); insert into photo_test values(18,18,'photo/forest1.jpg'); insert into photo_test values(18,19,'photo/tree1.jpg'); insert into photo_test values(18,20,'photo/flower1.jpg'); insert into photo_test values(19,21,'photo/laptop1.jpg'); insert into photo_test values(19,22,'photo/camer1.jpg'); insert into photo_test values(19,23,'photo/cybermbl1.jpg'); insert into photo_test values (17,24,'photo/F1.jpg');

There are three groups of pgm_main_category_id each with a value of 17 (group 17 has four records),18 (group 18 has three records) and 19 (group 19 has three records). Now, if you want to select top 2 records from each group, the query is as follows:Collapse | Copy Code
select pgm_main_category_id,pgm_sub_category_id,file_path from ( select pgm_main_category_id,pgm_sub_category_id,file_path, rank() over (partition by pgm_main_category_id order by pgm_sub_category_id asc) as rankid from photo_test ) photo_test where rankid < 3 -- replace 3 by any number 2,3 etc for top2 or top3.

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order by pgm_main_category_id,pgm_sub_category_id

The result is as:Collapse | Copy Code

pgm_main_category_id 17 15 17 16 18 18 18 19 19 21 19 22 pgm_sub_category_id file_path photo/bb1.jpg photo/cricket1.jpg photo/forest1.jpg photo/tree1.jpg photo/laptop1.jpg photocamer1.jpg

(iii) Deleting duplicate rows from a table A table with a primary key doesn t contain duplicates. But if due to some reason, the keys have to be disabled or when importing data from other sources, duplicates come up in the table data, it is often needed to get rid of such duplicates. This can be achieved in tow ways :(a) Using a temporary table. (b) Without using a temporary table. (a) Using a temporary or staging table Let the table employee_test1 contain some duplicate data like:Collapse | Copy Code
CREATE TABLE Employee_Test1 ( Emp_ID INT, Emp_name Varchar(100), Emp_Sal Decimal (10,2) ) INSERT INTO Employee_Test1 VALUES (1,'Anees',1000); INSERT INTO Employee_Test1 VALUES (2,'Rick',1200); INSERT INTO Employee_Test1 VALUES (3,'John',1100); INSERT INTO Employee_Test1 VALUES (4,'Stephen',1300); INSERT INTO Employee_Test1 VALUES (5,'Maria',1400); INSERT INTO Employee_Test1 VALUES (6,'Tim',1150); INSERT INTO Employee_Test1 VALUES (6,'Tim',1150);

Step 1: Create a temporary table from the main table as:select top 0* into employee_test1_temp from employee_test1

Step2 : Insert the result of the GROUP BY query into the temporary table as:insert into employee_test1_temp select Emp_ID,Emp_name,Emp_Sal from employee_test1 group by Emp_ID,Emp_name,Emp_Sal

Step3: Truncate the original table as:Collapse | Copy Code

truncate table employee_test1

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Step4: Fill the original table with the rows of the temporary table as:Collapse | Copy Code
insert into employee_test1 select * from employee_test1_temp

Now, the duplicate rows from the main table have been removed. Collapse | Copy Code
select * from employee_test1

gives the result as:Collapse | Copy Code

Emp_ID 1 2 3 4 5 6 Emp_name Anees Rick John Stephen Maria Tim Emp_Sal 1000 1200 1100 1300 1400 1150

(b) Without using a temporary table Collapse | Copy Code

;with T as ( select * , row_number() over (partition by Emp_ID order by Emp_ID) as rank from employee_test1 ) delete from T where rank > 1

The result is as:Collapse | Copy Code

Emp_ID 1 2 3 4 5 6 Emp_name Anees Rick John Stephen Maria Tim Emp_Sal 1000 1200 1100 1300 1400 1150

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