Basic & Advanced SQL Interview Questions

And Answers:
Congratulations! You got the interview! In this post, we have put
together both basic and advanced SQL Interview Questions and
Answers. This post contains SQL Interview Questions for
Experienced as well as Freshers.

I have segregated this “SQL Server Interview Questions” post

into two types.

1. Common SQL Interview Questions

2. Practical SQL Query Interview Questions.

I don’t want to take much time of yours but I couldn’t move

further without mentioning about this inevitable job interview
question which every hiring manager asks you in any interview
i.e., Tell Me About Yourself. Answering this questions is very easy
if you follow the link. It contains sample answers for both
freshers and experienced. Now, Let’s move on to the actual post.

General SQL Interview Questions:

1. What is a Database?
A database is a collection of information in an organized form for
faster and better access, storage and manipulation. It can also be
defined as a collection of tables, schema, views and other
database objects.

2. What is Database Testing?

It is AKA back-end testing or data testing.
Database testing involves in verifying the integrity of data in the
front end with the data present in the back end. It validates the
schema, database tables, columns, indexes, stored
procedures, triggers, data duplication, orphan records, junk
records. It involves in updating records in a database and
verifying the same on the front end.

3. What is the difference between GUI Testing and

Database Testing?
  GUI Testing is AKA User Interface Testing or Front-end
testing
Database Testing is AKA back-end testing or data testing.
 GUI Testing deals with all the testable items that are open to
the user to interaction such as Menus, Forms etc.
Database Testing deals with all the testable items that are
generally hidden from the user.
 The tester who is performing GUI Testing doesn’t need to
know Structured Query Language
The tester who is performing Database Testing needs to
know Structured Query Language
 GUI Testing includes invalidating the text boxes, check
boxes, buttons, drop-downs, forms etc., majorly the look and
feel of the overall application
Database Testing involves in verifying the integrity of data in
the front end with the data present in the back end. It
validates the schema, database tables, columns,
indexes, stored procedures, triggers, data duplication,
orphan records, junk records. It involves in updating records
in a database and verifying the same on the front end.

4. What is a Table in a Database?

A table is a database object used to store records in a field in the
form of columns and rows that holds data.

5. What is a Field in a Database?

A field in a Database table is a space allocated to store a
particular record within a table.

6. What is a Record in a Database?

A record (also called a row of data) is an ordered set of related
data in a table.

7. What is a column in a Table?

A column is a vertical entity in a table that contains all
information associated with a specific field in a table.

8. What is DBMS?
Database Management System is a collection of programs that
enables a user to store, retrieve, update and delete information
from a database.
9. What is RDBMS?
RDBMS stands for Relational Database Management System.
RDBMS is a database management system (DBMS) that is based
on the relational model. Data from relational database can be
accessed using Structured Query Language (SQL)

10. What are the popular Database Management Systems

in the IT Industry?
Oracle, MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server, PostgreSQL, Sybase,
MongoDB, DB2, and Microsoft Access etc.,

11. What is SQL?

SQL Overview: SQL stands for Structured Query Language. It is
an American National Standard Institute (ANSI) standard. It is
a standard language for accessing and manipulating databases.
Using SQL, some of the action we could do are to create
databases, tables, stored procedures (SP’s), execute queries,
retrieve, insert, update, delete data against a database.

12. What are the different types of SQL commands?

SQL commands are segregated into following types:

 DDL – Data Definition Language

 DML – Data Manipulation Language
 DQL – Data Query Language
 DCL – Data Control Language
 TCL – Transaction Control Language

View Complete Post

13. What are the different DDL commands in SQL?
DDL commands are used to define or alter the structure of the
database.

 CREATE: To create databases and database objects

 ALTER: To alter existing database objects
 DROP: To drop databases and databases objects
 TRUNCATE: To remove all records from a table but not its
database structure
 RENAME: To rename database objects
14. What are the different DML commands in SQL?
DML commands are used for managing data present in the
database.

 SELECT: To select specific data from a database

 INSERT: To insert new records into a table
 UPDATE: To update existing records
 DELETE: To delete existing records from a table

15. What are the different DCL commands in SQL?

DCL commands are used to create roles, grant permission and
control access to the database objects.

 GRANT: To provide user access

 DENY: To deny permissions to users
 REVOKE: To remove user access

16. What are the different TCL commands in SQL?

TCL commands are used to manage the changes made by DML
statements.

 COMMIT: To write and store the changes to the database

 ROLLBACK: To restore the database since the last commit

17. What is an Index?

An index is used to speed up the performance of queries. It
makes faster retrieval of data from the table. The index can be
created on one column or a group of columns.

18. What is a View?

A view is like a subset of a table which is stored logically in a
database. A view is a virtual table. It contains rows and columns
similar to a real table. The fields in the view are fields from one or
more real tables. Views do not contain data of their own. They
are used to restrict access to the database or to hide data
complexity.
1 CREATE VIEW view_name AS SELECT column_name1, column_name2 FROM table_name WHERE CONDITION;

19. What are the advantages of Views?

Some of the advantages of Views are

1. Views occupy no space

2. Views are used to simply retrieve the results of complicated
queries that need to be executed often.
3. Views are used to restrict access to the database or to hide
data complexity.

20. What is a Subquery ?

A Subquery is a SQL query within another query. It is a subset of
a Select statement whose return values are used in filtering the
conditions of the main query.

21. What is a temp table?

Ans. A temp table is a temporary storage structure to store the
data temporarily.

22. How to avoid duplicate records in a query?

The SQL SELECT DISTINCT query is used to return only unique
values. It eliminates all the duplicated values.
View Detailed Post

23. What is the difference between Rename and Alias?

‘Rename’ is a permanent name given to a table or column
‘Alias’ is a temporary name given to a table or column.

24. What is a Join?

Join is a query, which retrieves related columns or rows from
multiple tables.

25. What are the different types of joins?

Types of Joins are as follows:

 INNER JOIN
 LEFT JOIN
 RIGHT JOIN
 OUTER JOIN
View Complete Post
26. What is the difference between an inner and outer
join?
An inner join returns rows when there is at least some matching
data between two (or more) tables that are being compared.
An outer join returns rows from both tables that include the
records that are unmatched from one or both the tables.

27. What are SQL constraints?

SQL constraints are the set of rules that enforced some restriction
while inserting, deleting or updating of data in the databases.

28. What are the constraints available in SQL?

Some of the constraints in SQL are – Primary Key, Foreign Key,
Unique Key, SQL Not Null, Default, Check and Index constraint.

29. What is a Unique constraint?

A unique constraint is used to ensure that there are no
duplication values in the field/column.

30. What is a Primary Key?

A PRIMARY KEY constraint uniquely identifies each record in a
database table. All columns participating in a primary key
constraint must not contain NULL values.

31. Can a table contain multiple PRIMARY KEY’s?

The short answer is no, a table is not allowed to contain multiple

primary keys but it allows to have one composite primary key
consisting of two or more columns.

32. What is a Composite PRIMARY KEY?

Composite PRIMARY KEY is a primary key created on more than
one column (combination of multiple fields) in a table.

33. What is a FOREIGN KEY?

A FOREIGN KEY is a key used to link two tables together.
A FOREIGN KEY in a table is linked with the PRIMARY KEY of
another table.
34. Can a table contain multiple FOREIGN KEY’s?
A table can have many FOREIGN KEY’s.

35. What is the difference between UNIQUE and PRIMARY

KEY constraints?
There should be only one PRIMARY KEY in a table whereas there
can be any number of UNIQUE Keys.
PRIMARY KEY doesn’t allow NULL values whereas Unique key
allows NULL values.

36. What is a NULL value?

A field with a NULL value is a field with no value. A NULLvalue is
different from a zero value or a field that contains spaces. A field
with a NULL value is one that has been left blank during record
creation. Assume, there is a field in a table is optional and it is
possible to insert a record without adding a value to the optional
field then the field will be saved with a NULL value.

37. What is the difference between NULL value, Zero, and

Blank space?
As I mentioned earlier, Null value is field with no value which is
different from zero value and blank space.
Null value is a field with no value.
Zero is a number
Blank space is the value we provide. The ASCII value of space is
CHAR(32).

38. How to Test for NULL Values?

A field with a NULL value is a field with no value. NULLvalue
cannot be compared with other NULL values. Hence, It is not
possible to test for NULL values with comparison operators, such
as =, <, or <>. For this, we have to use the IS NULL and IS
NOT NULL operators.

1 SELECT column_names FROM table_name WHERE column_name IS NULL;

1 SELECT column_names FROM table_name WHERE column_name IS NOT NULL;

39. What is SQL NOT NULL constraint?

NOT NULL constraint is used to ensure that the value in the filed
cannot be a NULL

40. What is a CHECK constraint?

A CHECK constraint is used to limit the value that is accepted by
one or more columns.

E.g. ‘Age’ field should contain only the value greater than 18.

CREATE TABLE EMP_DETAILS(EmpID int NOT NULL, NAME VARCHAR (30) NOT NULL, Age INT CHECK (AGE &gt;
1
18), PRIMARY KEY (EmpID));

41. What is a DEFAULT constraint?

DEFAULT constraint is used to include a default value in a
column when no value is supplied at the time of inserting a
record.

42. What is Normalization?

Normalization is the process of table design to minimize the data
redundancy. There are different types of Noramalization forms in
SQL.

 First Normal Form

 Second Normal Form
 Third Normal Form
 Boyce and Codd Normal Form

43. What is Stored procedure?

A Stored Procedure is a collection of SQL statements that have
been created and stored in the database to perform a particular
task. The stored procedure accepts input parameters and
processes them and returns a single value such as a number or
text value or a result set (set of rows).

44. What is a Trigger?

A Trigger is a SQL procedure that initiates an action in response
to an event (Insert, Delete or Update) occurs. When a new
Employee is added to an Employee_Details table, new records will
be created in the relevant tables such as Employee_Payroll,
Employee_Time_Sheet etc.,

45. Explain SQL Data Types?

In SQL Server, each column in a database table has a name and
a data type. We need to decide what type of data to store inside
each and every column of a table while creating a SQL table.

View Detailed Post

46. What are the possible values that can be stored in

a BOOLEAN data field?
TRUE and FALSE

47. What is the largest value that can be stored in

a BYTE data field?
The largest number that can be represented in a single byte is
11111111 or 255. The number of possible values is 256 (i.e. 255
(the largest possible value) plus 1 (zero), or 28).

48. What are Operators available in SQL?

SQL Operator is a reserved word used primarily in an SQL
statement’s WHERE clause to perform operations, such as
arithmetic operations and comparisons. These are used to specify
conditions in an SQL statement.

There are three types of Operators.

1. Arithmetic Operators
2. Comparison Operators
3. Logical Operators

View Detailed Post

49. Which TCP/IP port does SQL Server run?
By default it is 1433

50. List out the ACID properties and explain?

Following are the four properties of ACID. These guarantees that
the database transactions are processed reliably.

 Atomicity
 Consistency
 Isolation
 Durability

51. Define the SELECT INTO statement.

The SELECT INTO statement copies data from one table into a
new table. The new table will be created with the column-names
and types as defined in the old table. You can create new column
names using the AS clause.

1 SELECT * INTO newtable FROM oldtable WHERE condition;

52. What is the difference between Delete, Truncate and

Drop command?
The difference between the Delete, Truncate and Drop
command is

 Delete command is a DML command, it is used to delete rows

from a table. It can be rolled back.
 Truncate is a DDL command, it is used to delete all the rows
from the table and free the space containing the table. It
cant be rolled back.
 Drop is a DDL command, it removes the complete data along
with the table structure(unlike truncate command that
removes only the rows). All the tables’ rows, indexes, and
privileges will also be removed.

53. What is the difference between Delete and Truncate?

The difference between the Delete, and Truncate are
 DELETE TRUNCATE

Delete statement is used to delete Truncate statement is used to delete all

rows from a table. It can be rolled the rows from the table and free the

back. space containing the table. It cant be

rolled back.

We can use WHERE condition in We cant use WHERE condition in

DELETE statement and can delete TRUNCATE statement. So we cant

required rows delete required rows alone

We can delete specific rows using We can only delete all the rows at a time

DELETE using TRUNCATE

Delete is a DML command Truncate is a DDL command

Delete maintains log and performance Truncate maintains minimal log and

is slower than Truncate performance wise faster

We need DELETE permission on We need at least ALTER permission on

Table to use DELETE command the table to use TRUNCATE command

54. What is the difference between Union and Union All

command?
This is one of the tricky SQL Interview Questions. Interviewer
may ask you this question in another way as what are the
advantages of Union All over Union.
Both Union and Union All concatenate the result of two tables but
the way these two queries handle duplicates are different.

Union: It omits duplicate records and returns only distinct result

set of two or more select statements.
Union All: It returns all the rows including duplicates in the
result set of different select statements.

Performance wise Union All is faster than Union, Since Union All
doesn’t remove duplicates. Union query checks the duplicate
values which consumes some time to remove the duplicate
records.

Assume: Table1 has 10 records, Table2 has 10 records. Last

record from both the tables are same.

If you run Union query.

1 SELECT * FROM Table1

2 UNION

3 SELECT * FROM Table2

Output: Total 19 records

If you run Union query.

1 SELECT * FROM Table1

2 UNION ALL

3 SELECT * FROM Table2

Output: Total 20 records

Data type of all the columns in the two tables should be same.

55. What is the difference between Having and Where

clause?
Where clause is used to fetch data from a database that specifies
particular criteria whereas a Having clause is used along with
‘GROUP BY’ to fetch data that meets particular criteria specified
by the Aggregate functions. Where clause cannot be used with
Aggregate functions, but the Having clause can.

56. What are aggregate functions in SQL?

SQL aggregate functions return a single value, calculated from
values in a column. Some of the aggregate functions in SQL are
as follows

 AVG() – This function returns the average value

 COUNT() – This function returns the number of rows
 MAX() – This function returns the largest value
 MIN() – This function returns the smallest value
 ROUND() – This function rounds a numeric field to the
number of decimals specified
 SUM() – This function returns the sum

View Detailed Post

57. What are string functions in SQL?

SQL string functions are used primarily for string manipulation.
Some of the widely used SQL string functions are

 LEN() – It returns the length of the value in a text field

 LOWER() – It converts character data to lower case
 UPPER() – It converts character data to upper case
 SUBSTRING() – It extracts characters from a text field
 LTRIM() – It is to remove all whitespace from the beginning
of the string
 RTRIM() – It is to remove all whitespace at the end of the
string
 CONCAT() – Concatenate function combines multiple
character strings together
 REPLACE() – To update the content of a string.
View Detailed Post

Practical SQL Interview Questions:

58. How to add new Employee details in an
Employee_Details table with the following details
Employee_Name: John, Salary: 5500, Age: 29?

1 INSERT into Employee_Details (Employee_Name, Salary, Age) VALUES (‘John’, 5500 , 29);

View Detailed Post

59. How to add a column ‘Salary’ to a table

Employee_Details?

1 ALTER TABLE Employee_Details ADD (Salary);

View Detailed Post

60. How to change a value of the field ‘Salary’ as 7500 for

an Employee_Name ‘John’ in a table Employee_Details?

1 UPDATE Employee_Details set Salary = 7500 where Employee_Name = ‘John’;

View Detailed Post

61. Write an SQL Query to select all records from the

table?
1 Select * from table_name;

View Detailed Post

62. How To Get List of All Tables From A DataBase?

To view the tables available on a particular DataBase

1 USE TestDB

2 GO

3 SELECT * FROM sys.Tables

4 GO

63. Define SQL Delete statement.

The SQL Delete statement is used to delete records from a table.

1 DELETE FROM table_name WHERE some_column=some_value;

View Detailed Post

64. Write the command to remove all Players named

Sachin from the Players table.

1 DELETE from Players WHERE Player_Name = ‘Sachin’

65. How to fetch values from TestTable1 that are not

in TestTable2 without using NOT keyword?
1 --------------

2 | TestTable1 |

3 --------------

4| 11 |

5| 12 |

6| 13 |

7| 14 |

8 --------------

1 --------------

2 | TestTable2 |

3 --------------

4| 11 |

5| 12 |

6 --------------

By using the except keyword

1 SELECT * FROM TestTable1 EXCEPT SELECT * FROM TestTable2;

66. How to get each name only once from an employee

table?
By using the DISTINCT keyword, we could get each name only
once.
1 SELECT DISTINCT employee_name FROM employee_table;

67. How to rename a column in the output of SQL query?

By using SQL AS keyword

1 SELECT column_name AS new_name FROM table_name;

68. What is the order of SQL SELECT?

Order of SQL SELECT statement is as follows

SELECT, FROM, WHERE, GROUP BY, HAVING, ORDER BY.

69. How to display the current date in SQL.

By using query

1 SELECT GetDate();

70. Write an SQL Query to find an Employee_Name whose

Salary is equal or greater than 5000 from the below table
Employee_Details.

1 | Employee_Name | Salary|

2 -----------------------------

3 | John | 2500 |

4 | Emma | 3500 |
5 | Mark | 5500 |

6 | Anne | 6500 |

7 -----------------------------

Syntax:

1 SELECT Employee_Name FROM Employee_Details WHERE Salary>=5000;

Output:

1 | Employee_Name | Salary|

2 -----------------------------

3 | Mark | 5500 |

4 | Anne | 6500 |

5 -----------------------------

71. Write an SQL Query to find list of Employee_Name

start with ‘E’ from the below table

1 | Employee_Name | Salary|

2 -----------------------------

3 | John | 2500 |

4 | Emma | 3500 |

5 | Mark | 5500 |

6 | Anne | 6500 |

7 -----------------------------

Syntax:
1 SELECT * FROM Employee_Details WHERE Employee_Name like 'E%';

Output:

1 | Employee_Name | Salary|

2 -----------------------------

3 | Emma | 3500 |

4 -----------------------------

72. Write SQL SELECT query that returns the FirstName

and LastName from Employee_Details table.

1 SELECT FirstName, LastName FROM Employee_Details;

73. How to rename a Table?

1 SP_RENAME TABLE 'SCOREBOARD', 'OVERALLSCORE'

To rename Table Name & Column Name

1 sp_rename OldTableName,NewTableName

2 sp_rename 'TableName.OldColumnName', 'NewColumnName'

74. How to select all the even number records from a

table?
To select all the even number records from a table:
1 Select * from table where id % 2 = 0

75. How to select all the odd number records from a

table?
To select all the odd number records from a table:

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

76. What is the SQL CASE statement?

SQL Case statement allows embedding an if-else like clause in
the SELECT statement.
77. Can you display the result from the below table
TestTable based on the criteria M,m as M and F,
f as F and Null as N and g, k, I as U

1 SELECT Gender from TestTable

1 | Gender |

2 ------------

3 | M |

4 | F |

5 | NULL |

6 | m |

7 | f |
8 | g |

9 | H |

10 | i |

11 ------------

By using the below syntax we could achieve the output as

required.

1 SELECT Gender,

2 case

3 when Gender='i' then 'U'

4 when Gender='g' then 'U'

5 when Gender='H' then 'U'

6 when Gender='NULL' then 'N'

7 else upper(Gender)

8 end as newgender from TestTable GROUP BY Gender

78. What will be the result of the query below?

1 select case when null = null then 'True' else 'False' end as Result;

This query returns “False”. In the above question, we could see

null = null is not the proper way to compare a null value. To
compare a value with null, we use IS operator in SQL.

So the correct way is as follows

1 select case when null is null then 'True' else 'False' end as Result;

79. What will be the result of the query below?

1 select case when null is null then 'Queries In SQL Server' else 'Queries In MySQL' end as Result;

This query will returns “Queries In SQL Server”.

80. How do you update F as M and M as F from the below

table TestTable?

1 | Name | Gender |

2 ------------------------

3 | John | M |

4 | Emma | F |

5 | Mark | M |

6 | Anne | F |

7 ------------------------

By using the below syntax we could achieve the output as

required.

1 UPDATE TestTable SET Gender = CASE Gender WHEN 'F' THEN 'M' ELSE 'F' END

81. Describe SQL comments?

Single Line Comments: Single line comments start with two
consecutive hyphens (–) and ended by the end of the line
Multi-Line Comments: Multi-line comments start with /* and end
with */. Any text between /* and */ will be ignored.
82. How to get unique records from a table?
By using DISTINCT keyword.

1 SELECT DISTINCT Col1, Col2 from Table1

83. What is the difference between NVL function, IFNULL

function, and ISNULL function?
These three functions work in the same way. These functions are
used to replace NULL value with another value. Oracle developers
use NVL function, MySQL developers use IFNULL function and
SQL Server developers use ISNULL function.
Assume, some of the values in a column are NULL.
If you run below statement, you will get result as NULL

1 SELECT col1 * (col2 + col3) FROM Table1

Suppose any of the value in col3 is NULL then as I said your

result will be NULL.

To overcome this we use NVL() function, IFNULL() function,

ISNULL() Function.

ORACLE:

1 SELECT col1 * (col2 + NVL(col3,0)) FROM Table1

MySQL:
1 SELECT col1 * (col2 + IFNULL(col3,0)) FROM Table1

Also, you can use the COALESCE() function

1 SELECT col1 * (col2 + COALESCE(col3,0)) FROM Table1

SQL Server:

1 SELECT col1 * (col2 + ISNULL(col3,0)) FROM Table