SQL Interview Questions

1. What is Pattern Matching in SQL?

SQL pattern matching provides for pattern search in data if you have no clue as to what
that word should be. This kind of SQL query uses wildcards to match a string pattern,
rather than writing the exact word. The LIKE operator is used in conjunction with SQL
Wildcards to fetch the required information.

● Using the % wildcard to perform a simple search

The % wildcard matches zero or more characters of any type and can be used to define
wildcards both before and after the pattern. Search a student in your database with first
name beginning with the letter K:

SELECT *
FROM students
WHERE first_name LIKE 'K%'
● Omitting the patterns using the NOT keyword
Use the NOT keyword to select records that don't match the pattern. This query returns
all students whose first name does not begin with K.

SELECT *
FROM students
WHERE first_name NOT LIKE 'K%'
● Matching a pattern anywhere using the % wildcard twice
Search for a student in the database where he/she has a K in his/her first name.

SELECT *
FROM students
WHERE first_name LIKE '%Q%'
● Using the _ wildcard to match pattern at a specific position
The _ wildcard matches exactly one character of any type. It can be used in conjunction
with % wildcard. This query fetches all students with letter K at the third position in their
first name.

SELECT *
FROM students
WHERE first_name LIKE '__K%'
● Matching patterns for a specific length
The _ wildcard plays an important role as a limitation when it matches exactly one
character. It limits the length and position of the matched results. For example -

SELECT * /* Matches first names with three or more letters */

FROM students
WHERE first_name LIKE '___%'

SELECT * /* Matches first names with exactly four characters */

FROM students
WHERE first_name LIKE '____'

2. How to create empty tables with the same structure as another

table?
Creating empty tables with the same structure can be done smartly by fetching the
records of one table into a new table using the INTO operator while fixing a WHERE
clause to be false for all records. Hence, SQL prepares the new table with a duplicate
structure to accept the fetched records but since no records get fetched due to the
WHERE clause in action, nothing is inserted into the new table.

SELECT * INTO Students_copy

FROM Students WHERE 1 = 2;
3. What is a Recursive Stored Procedure?
A stored procedure that calls itself until a boundary condition is reached, is called a
recursive stored procedure. This recursive function helps the programmers to deploy
the same set of code several times as and when required. Some SQL programming
languages limit the recursion depth to prevent an infinite loop of procedure calls from
causing a stack overflow, which slows down the system and may lead to system
crashes.

DELIMITER $$ /* Set a new delimiter => $$ */

CREATE PROCEDURE calctotal( /* Create the procedure */
IN number INT, /* Set Input and Ouput variables */
OUT total INT
) BEGIN
DECLARE score INT DEFAULT NULL; /* Set the default value => "score" */
SELECT awards FROM achievements /* Update "score" via SELECT query */
WHERE id = number INTO score;
IF score IS NULL THEN SET total = 0; /* Termination condition */
ELSE
CALL calctotal(number+1); /* Recursive call */
SET total = total + score; /* Action after recursion */
END IF;
END $$ /* End of procedure */
DELIMITER ; /* Reset the delimiter */

4. What is a Stored Procedure?

A stored procedure is a subroutine available to applications that access a relational
database management system (RDBMS). Such procedures are stored in the database
data dictionary. The sole disadvantage of stored procedure is that it can be executed
nowhere except in the database and occupies more memory in the database server. It
also provides a sense of security and functionality as users who can't access the data
directly can be granted access via stored procedures.

DELIMITER $$
CREATE PROCEDURE FetchAllStudents()
BEGIN
SELECT * FROM myDB.students;
END $$
DELIMITER ;

5. What is Collation? What are the different types of Collation

Sensitivity?
Collation refers to a set of rules that determine how data is sorted and compared. Rules
defining the correct character sequence are used to sort the character data. It
incorporates options for specifying case sensitivity, accent marks, kana character types,
and character width. Below are the different types of collation sensitivity:

● Case sensitivity: A and a are treated differently.

● Accent sensitivity: a and á are treated differently.
● Kana sensitivity: Japanese kana characters Hiragana and Katakana are treated
differently.
● Width sensitivity: Same character represented in single-byte (half-width) and
6. What are the differences between OLTP and OLAP?
OLTP stands for Online Transaction Processing, is a class of software applications
capable of supporting transaction-oriented programs. An important attribute of an OLTP
system is its ability to maintain concurrency. OLTP systems often follow a decentralized
architecture to avoid single points of failure. These systems are generally designed for a
large audience of end-users who conduct short transactions. Queries involved in such
databases are generally simple, need fast response times, and return relatively few
records. A number of transactions per second acts as an effective measure for such
systems.

OLAP stands for Online Analytical Processing, a class of software programs that are
characterized by the relatively low frequency of online transactions. Queries are often
too complex and involve a bunch of aggregations. For OLAP systems, the effectiveness
measure relies highly on response time. Such systems are widely used for data mining
or maintaining aggregated, historical data, usually in multi-dimensional schemas.

7. What is OLTP?
OLTP stands for Online Transaction Processing, is a class of software applications
capable of supporting transaction-oriented programs. An essential attribute of an OLTP
system is its ability to maintain concurrency. To avoid single points of failure, OLTP
systems are often decentralized. These systems are usually designed for a large
number of users who conduct short transactions. Database queries are usually simple,
require sub-second response times, and return relatively few records. Here is an insight
into the working of an OLTP system [ Note - The figure is not important for interviews ] -

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8. What is User-defined function? What are its various types?
The user-defined functions in SQL are like functions in any other programming
language that accept parameters, perform complex calculations, and return a value.
They are written to use the logic repetitively whenever required. There are two types of
SQL user-defined functions:

● Scalar Function: As explained earlier, user-defined scalar functions return a

single scalar value.
● Table-Valued Functions: User-defined table-valued functions return a table as
output.
○ Inline: returns a table data type based on a single SELECT statement.
○ Multi-statement: returns a tabular result-set but, unlike inline, multiple
SELECT statements can be used inside the function body.
9. What is a UNIQUE constraint?
A UNIQUE constraint ensures that all values in a column are different. This provides
uniqueness for the column(s) and helps identify each row uniquely. Unlike primary key,
there can be multiple unique constraints defined per table. The code syntax for UNIQUE
is quite similar to that of PRIMARY KEY and can be used interchangeably.

CREATE TABLE Students ( /* Create table with a single field as unique */

ID INT NOT NULL UNIQUE
Name VARCHAR(255)
);

CREATE TABLE Students ( /* Create table with multiple fields as unique */

ID INT NOT NULL
LastName VARCHAR(255)
FirstName VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL
CONSTRAINT PK_Student
UNIQUE (ID, FirstName)
);

ALTER TABLE Students /* Set a column as unique */

ADD UNIQUE (ID);
ALTER TABLE Students /* Set multiple columns as unique */
ADD CONSTRAINT PK_Student /* Naming a unique constraint */
UNIQUE (ID, FirstName);
10. What is a Query?
A query is a request for data or information from a database table or combination of
tables. A database query can be either a select query or an action query.

SELECT fname, lname /* select query */

FROM myDb.students
WHERE student_id = 1;
UPDATE myDB.students /* action query */
SET fname = 'Captain', lname = 'America'
WHERE student_id = 1;
11. What is Data Integrity?
Data Integrity is the assurance of accuracy and consistency of data over its entire
life-cycle and is a critical aspect of the design, implementation, and usage of any
system which stores, processes, or retrieves data. It also defines integrity constraints to
enforce business rules on the data when it is entered into an application or a database.

12. What is the difference between Clustered and Non-clustered

index?
As explained above, the differences can be broken down into three small factors -

● Clustered index modifies the way records are stored in a database based on the
indexed column. A non-clustered index creates a separate entity within the table
which references the original table.
● Clustered index is used for easy and speedy retrieval of data from the database,
whereas, fetching records from the non-clustered index is relatively slower.
● In SQL, a table can have a single clustered index whereas it can have multiple
non-clustered indexes.

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13. What is an Index? Explain its different types.
A database index is a data structure that provides a quick lookup of data in a column or
columns of a table. It enhances the speed of operations accessing data from a
database table at the cost of additional writes and memory to maintain the index data
structure.

CREATE INDEX index_name /* Create Index */

ON table_name (column_1, column_2);
DROP INDEX index_name; /* Drop Index */
There are different types of indexes that can be created for different purposes:

● Unique and Non-Unique Index:

Unique indexes are indexes that help maintain data integrity by ensuring that no two
rows of data in a table have identical key values. Once a unique index has been defined
for a table, uniqueness is enforced whenever keys are added or changed within the
index.

CREATE UNIQUE INDEX myIndex

ON students (enroll_no);
Non-unique indexes, on the other hand, are not used to enforce constraints on the
tables with which they are associated. Instead, non-unique indexes are used solely to
improve query performance by maintaining a sorted order of data values that are used
frequently.

● Clustered and Non-Clustered Index:

Clustered indexes are indexes whose order of the rows in the database corresponds to
the order of the rows in the index. This is why only one clustered index can exist in a
given table, whereas, multiple non-clustered indexes can exist in the table.
The only difference between clustered and non-clustered indexes is that the database
manager attempts to keep the data in the database in the same order as the
corresponding keys appear in the clustered index.

Clustering indexes can improve the performance of most query operations because
they provide a linear-access path to data stored in the database.

Write a SQL statement to create a UNIQUE INDEX "my_index" on "my_table" for fields
"column_1" & "column_2".

14. What is a Cross-Join?

Cross join can be defined as a cartesian product of the two tables included in the join.
The table after join contains the same number of rows as in the cross-product of the
number of rows in the two tables. If a WHERE clause is used in cross join then the
query will work like an INNER JOIN.

SELECT stu.name, sub.subject

FROM students AS stu
CROSS JOIN subjects AS sub;

Write a SQL statement to CROSS JOIN 'table_1' with 'table_2' and fetch 'col_1' from
table_1 & 'col_2' from table_2 respectively. Do not use alias.
Write a SQL statement to perform SELF JOIN for 'Table_X' with alias 'Table_1' and
'Table_2', on columns 'Col_1' and 'Col_2' respectively.

15. What is a Self-Join?

A self JOIN is a case of regular join where a table is joined to itself based on some
relation between its own column(s). Self-join uses the INNER JOIN or LEFT JOIN
clause and a table alias is used to assign different names to the table within the query.

SELECT A.emp_id AS "Emp_ID",A.emp_name AS "Employee",

B.emp_id AS "Sup_ID",B.emp_name AS "Supervisor"
FROM employee A, employee B
WHERE A.emp_sup = B.emp_id;
16. What is a Join? List its different types.
The SQL Join clause is used to combine records (rows) from two or more tables in a
SQL database based on a related column between the two.
There are four different types of JOINs in SQL:

● (INNER) JOIN: Retrieves records that have matching values in both tables
involved in the join. This is the widely used join for queries.
SELECT *
FROM Table_A
JOIN Table_B;
SELECT *
FROM Table_A
INNER JOIN Table_B;
● LEFT (OUTER) JOIN: Retrieves all the records/rows from the left and the
matched records/rows from the right table.
SELECT *
FROM Table_A A
LEFT JOIN Table_B B
ON A.col = B.col;
● RIGHT (OUTER) JOIN: Retrieves all the records/rows from the right and the
matched records/rows from the left table.
SELECT *
FROM Table_A A
RIGHT JOIN Table_B B
ON A.col = B.col;
● FULL (OUTER) JOIN: Retrieves all the records where there is a match in either
the left or right table.
SELECT *
FROM Table_A A
FULL JOIN Table_B B
ON A.col = B.col;
17. What is a Foreign Key?
A FOREIGN KEY comprises of single or collection of fields in a table that essentially
refers to the PRIMARY KEY in another table. Foreign key constraint ensures referential
integrity in the relation between two tables.
The table with the foreign key constraint is labeled as the child table, and the table
containing the candidate key is labeled as the referenced or parent table.
CREATE TABLE Students ( /* Create table with foreign key - Way 1 */
ID INT NOT NULL
Name VARCHAR(255)
LibraryID INT
PRIMARY KEY (ID)
FOREIGN KEY (Library_ID) REFERENCES Library(LibraryID)
);

CREATE TABLE Students ( /* Create table with foreign key - Way 2 */

ID INT NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY
Name VARCHAR(255)
LibraryID INT FOREIGN KEY (Library_ID) REFERENCES Library(LibraryID)
);

ALTER TABLE Students /* Add a new foreign key */

ADD FOREIGN KEY (LibraryID)
REFERENCES Library (LibraryID);
What type of integrity constraint does the foreign key ensure?
Write a SQL statement to add a FOREIGN KEY 'col_fk' in 'table_y' that references
'col_pk' in 'table_x'.

18. What is a Subquery? What are its types?

A subquery is a query within another query, also known as a nested query or inner
query. It is used to restrict or enhance the data to be queried by the main query, thus
restricting or enhancing the output of the main query respectively. For example, here we
fetch the contact information for students who have enrolled for the maths subject:

SELECT name, email, mob, address

FROM myDb.contacts
WHERE roll_no IN (
SELECT roll_no
FROM myDb.students
WHERE subject = 'Maths');
There are two types of subquery - Correlated and Non-Correlated.
 ● A correlated subquery cannot be considered as an independent query, but it can
refer to the column in a table listed in the FROM of the main query.
● A non-correlated subquery can be considered as an independent query and the
output of the subquery is substituted in the main query.
Write a SQL query to update the field "status" in table "applications" from 0 to 1.
Write a SQL query to select the field "app_id" in table "applications" where "app_id" less
than 1000.
Write a SQL query to fetch the field "app_name" from "apps" where "apps.id" is equal to
the above collection of "app_id".

19. What is a Primary Key?

The PRIMARY KEY constraint uniquely identifies each row in a table. It must contain
UNIQUE values and has an implicit NOT NULL constraint.
A table in SQL is strictly restricted to have one and only one primary key, which is
comprised of single or multiple fields (columns).

CREATE TABLE Students ( /* Create table with a single field as primary key */
ID INT NOT NULL
Name VARCHAR(255)
PRIMARY KEY (ID)
);

CREATE TABLE Students ( /* Create table with multiple fields as primary key */
ID INT NOT NULL
LastName VARCHAR(255)
FirstName VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL,
CONSTRAINT PK_Student
PRIMARY KEY (ID, FirstName)
);

ALTER TABLE Students /* Set a column as primary key */

ADD PRIMARY KEY (ID);
ALTER TABLE Students /* Set multiple columns as primary key */
ADD CONSTRAINT PK_Student /*Naming a Primary Key*/
PRIMARY KEY (ID, FirstName);
write a sql statement to add primary key 't_id' to the table 'teachers'.
Write a SQL statement to add primary key constraint 'pk_a' for table 'table_a' and fields
'col_b, col_c'.

20. What are Constraints in SQL?

Constraints are used to specify the rules concerning data in the table. It can be applied
for single or multiple fields in an SQL table during the creation of the table or after
creating using the ALTER TABLE command. The constraints are:

● NOT NULL - Restricts NULL value from being inserted into a column.
● CHECK - Verifies that all values in a field satisfy a condition.
● DEFAULT - Automatically assigns a default value if no value has been specified
for the field.
● UNIQUE - Ensures unique values to be inserted into the field.
● INDEX - Indexes a field providing faster retrieval of records.
● PRIMARY KEY - Uniquely identifies each record in a table.
● FOREIGN KEY - Ensures referential integrity for a record in another table.
21. What are Tables and Fields?
A table is an organized collection of data stored in the form of rows and columns.
Columns can be categorized as vertical and rows as horizontal. The columns in a table
are called fields while the rows can be referred to as records.

22. What is the difference between SQL and MySQL?

SQL is a standard language for retrieving and manipulating structured databases. On
the contrary, MySQL is a relational database management system, like SQL Server,
Oracle or IBM DB2, that is used to manage SQL databases.
23. What is SQL?
SQL stands for Structured Query Language. It is the standard language for relational
database management systems. It is especially useful in handling organized data
comprised of entities (variables) and relations between different entities of the data.

24. What is RDBMS? How is it different from DBMS?

RDBMS stands for Relational Database Management System. The key difference here,
compared to DBMS, is that RDBMS stores data in the form of a collection of tables, and
relations can be defined between the common fields of these tables. Most modern
database management systems like MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, IBM DB2,
and Amazon Redshift are based on RDBMS.

25. What is DBMS?

DBMS stands for Database Management System. DBMS is a system software
responsible for the creation, retrieval, updation, and management of the database. It
ensures that our data is consistent, organized, and is easily accessible by serving as an
interface between the database and its end-users or application software.

26. What is Database?

A database is an organized collection of data, stored and retrieved digitally from a
remote or local computer system. Databases can be vast and complex, and such
databases are developed using fixed design and modeling approaches.

27. What is the SELECT statement?

SELECT operator in SQL is used to select data from a database. The data returned is
stored in a result table, called the result-set.

SELECT * FROM myDB.students;

28. What are some common clauses used with SELECT query in SQL?
Some common SQL clauses used in conjuction with a SELECT query are as follows:

● WHERE clause in SQL is used to filter records that are necessary, based on
specific conditions.
● ORDER BY clause in SQL is used to sort the records based on some field(s) in
ascending (ASC) or descending order (DESC).
SELECT *
FROM myDB.students
WHERE graduation_year = 2019
ORDER BY studentID DESC;
● GROUP BY clause in SQL is used to group records with identical data and can
be used in conjunction with some aggregation functions to produce summarized
results from the database.
● HAVING clause in SQL is used to filter records in combination with the GROUP
BY clause. It is different from WHERE, since the WHERE clause cannot filter
aggregated records.
SELECT COUNT(studentId), country
FROM myDB.students
WHERE country != "INDIA"
GROUP BY country
HAVING COUNT(studentID) > 5;
29. What are UNION, MINUS and INTERSECT commands?
The UNION operator combines and returns the result-set retrieved by two or more
SELECT statements.
The MINUS operator in SQL is used to remove duplicates from the result-set obtained
by the second SELECT query from the result-set obtained by the first SELECT query
and then return the filtered results from the first.
The INTERSECT clause in SQL combines the result-set fetched by the two SELECT
statements where records from one match the other and then returns this intersection of
result-sets.

Certain conditions need to be met before executing either of the above statements in
SQL -

● Each SELECT statement within the clause must have the same number of
columns
● The columns must also have similar data types
● The columns in each SELECT statement should necessarily have the same
order
SELECT name FROM Students /* Fetch the union of queries */
UNION
SELECT name FROM Contacts;
SELECT name FROM Students /* Fetch the union of queries with duplicates*/
UNION ALL
SELECT name FROM Contacts;
SELECT name FROM Students /* Fetch names from students */
MINUS /* that aren't present in contacts */
SELECT name FROM Contacts;
SELECT name FROM Students /* Fetch names from students */
INTERSECT /* that are present in contacts as well */
SELECT name FROM Contacts;
Write a SQL query to fetch "names" that are present in either table "accounts" or in table
"registry".
Write a SQL query to fetch "names" that are present in "accounts" but not in table
"registry".
Write a SQL query to fetch "names" from table "contacts" that are neither present in
"accounts.name" nor in "registry.name".

30. What is Cursor? How to use a Cursor?

A database cursor is a control structure that allows for the traversal of records in a
database. Cursors, in addition, facilitates processing after traversal, such as retrieval,
addition, and deletion of database records. They can be viewed as a pointer to one row
in a set of rows.

Working with SQL Cursor:

1. DECLARE a cursor after any variable declaration. The cursor declaration must
always be associated with a SELECT Statement.
2. Open cursor to initialize the result set. The OPEN statement must be called
before fetching rows from the result set.
3. FETCH statement to retrieve and move to the next row in the result set.
4. Call the CLOSE statement to deactivate the cursor.
5. Finally use the DEALLOCATE statement to delete the cursor definition and
release the associated resources.

DECLARE @name VARCHAR(50) /* Declare All Required Variables */

DECLARE db_cursor CURSOR FOR /* Declare Cursor Name*/
SELECT name
FROM myDB.students
WHERE parent_name IN ('Sara', 'Ansh')
OPEN db_cursor /* Open cursor and Fetch data into @name */
FETCH next
FROM db_cursor
INTO @name
CLOSE db_cursor /* Close the cursor and deallocate the resources */
DEALLOCATE db_cursor
31. What are Entities and Relationships?
Entity: An entity can be a real-world object, either tangible or intangible, that can be
easily identifiable. For example, in a college database, students, professors, workers,
departments, and projects can be referred to as entities. Each entity has some
associated properties that provide it an identity.

Relationships: Relations or links between entities that have something to do with each
other. For example - The employee's table in a company's database can be associated
with the salary table in the same database.

32. List the different types of relationships in SQL.

 ● One-to-One - This can be defined as the relationship between two tables where
each record in one table is associated with the maximum of one record in the
other table.
● One-to-Many & Many-to-One - This is the most commonly used relationship
where a record in a table is associated with multiple records in the other table.
● Many-to-Many - This is used in cases when multiple instances on both sides are
needed for defining a relationship.
● Self-Referencing Relationships - This is used when a table needs to define a
relationship with itself.
33. What is an Alias in SQL?
An alias is a feature of SQL that is supported by most, if not all, RDBMSs. It is a
temporary name assigned to the table or table column for the purpose of a particular
SQL query. In addition, aliasing can be employed as an obfuscation technique to secure
the real names of database fields. A table alias is also called a correlation name.

An alias is represented explicitly by the AS keyword but in some cases, the same can
be performed without it as well. Nevertheless, using the AS keyword is always a good
practice.

SELECT A.emp_name AS "Employee" /* Alias using AS keyword */

B.emp_name AS "Supervisor"
FROM employee A, employee B /* Alias without AS keyword */
WHERE A.emp_sup = B.emp_id;
Write an SQL statement to select all from table "Limited" with alias "Ltd".

34. What is a View?

A view in SQL is a virtual table based on the result-set of an SQL statement. A view
contains rows and columns, just like a real table. The fields in a view are fields from one
or more real tables in the database.
35. What is Normalization?
Normalization represents the way of organizing structured data in the database
efficiently. It includes the creation of tables, establishing relationships between them,
and defining rules for those relationships. Inconsistency and redundancy can be kept in
check based on these rules, hence, adding flexibility to the database.

36. What is Denormalization?

Denormalization is the inverse process of normalization, where the normalized schema
is converted into a schema that has redundant information. The performance is
improved by using redundancy and keeping the redundant data consistent. The reason
for performing denormalization is the overheads produced in the query processor by an
over-normalized structure.

37. What are the TRUNCATE, DELETE and DROP statements?

DELETE statement is used to delete rows from a table.

DELETE FROM Candidates

WHERE CandidateId > 1000;
TRUNCATE command is used to delete all the rows from the table and free the space
containing the table.

TRUNCATE TABLE Candidates;

DROP command is used to remove an object from the database. If you drop a table, all
the rows in the table are deleted and the table structure is removed from the database.

DROP TABLE Candidates;

Write a SQL statement to wipe a table 'Temporary' from memory.
Write a SQL query to remove first 1000 records from table 'Temporary' based on 'id'.
Write a SQL statement to delete the table 'Temporary' while keeping its relations intact.

39. What is the difference between DROP and TRUNCATE statements?

If a table is dropped, all things associated with the tables are dropped as well. This
includes - the relationships defined on the table with other tables, the integrity checks
and constraints, access privileges and other grants that the table has. To create and use
the table again in its original form, all these relations, checks, constraints, privileges and
relationships need to be redefined. However, if a table is truncated, none of the above
problems exist and the table retains its original structure.

40. What is the difference between DELETE and TRUNCATE

statements?
The TRUNCATE command is used to delete all the rows from the table and free the
space containing the table.
The DELETE command deletes only the rows from the table based on the condition
given in the where clause or deletes all the rows from the table if no condition is
specified. But it does not free the space containing the table.
41. What are Aggregate and Scalar functions?
An aggregate function performs operations on a collection of values to return a single
scalar value. Aggregate functions are often used with the GROUP BY and HAVING
clauses of the SELECT statement. Following are the widely used SQL aggregate
functions:

● AVG() - Calculates the mean of a collection of values.

● COUNT() - Counts the total number of records in a specific table or view.
● MIN() - Calculates the minimum of a collection of values.
● MAX() - Calculates the maximum of a collection of values.
● SUM() - Calculates the sum of a collection of values.
● FIRST() - Fetches the first element in a collection of values.
● LAST() - Fetches the last element in a collection of values.
Note: All aggregate functions described above ignore NULL values except for the
COUNT function.

A scalar function returns a single value based on the input value. Following are the
widely used SQL scalar functions:

● LEN() - Calculates the total length of the given field (column).

● UCASE() - Converts a collection of string values to uppercase characters.
● LCASE() - Converts a collection of string values to lowercase characters.
● MID() - Extracts substrings from a collection of string values in a table.
● CONCAT() - Concatenates two or more strings.
● RAND() - Generates a random collection of numbers of a given length.
● ROUND() - Calculates the round-off integer value for a numeric field (or decimal
point values).
● NOW() - Returns the current date & time.
● FORMAT() - Sets the format to display a collection of values.

PostgreSQL Interview Questions

1. What is PostgreSQL?
PostgreSQL was first called Postgres and was developed by a team led by Computer
Science Professor Michael Stonebraker in 1986. It was developed to help developers
build enterprise-level applications by upholding data integrity by making systems
fault-tolerant. PostgreSQL is therefore an enterprise-level, flexible, robust, open-source,
and object-relational DBMS that supports flexible workloads along with handling
concurrent users. It has been consistently supported by the global developer
community. Due to its fault-tolerant nature, PostgreSQL has gained widespread
popularity among developers.

2. What is the capacity of a table in PostgreSQL?

The maximum size of PostgreSQL is 32TB.

3. What is the importance of the TRUNCATE statement?

TRUNCATE TABLE name_of_table statement removes the data efficiently and quickly
from the table.
The truncate statement can also be used to reset values of the identity columns along
with data cleanup as shown below:

TRUNCATE TABLE name_of_table

RESTART IDENTITY;
We can also use the statement for removing data from multiple tables all at once by
mentioning the table names separated by comma as shown below:

TRUNCATE TABLE
table_1,
table_2,
table_3;
4. Define tokens in PostgreSQL?
A token in PostgreSQL is either a keyword, identifier, literal, constant, quotes identifier,
or any symbol that has a distinctive personality. They may or may not be separated
using a space, newline or a tab. If the tokens are keywords, they are usually commands
with useful meanings. Tokens are known as building blocks of any PostgreSQL code.

5. What are partitioned tables called in PostgreSQL?

Partitioned tables are logical structures that are used for dividing large tables into
smaller structures that are called partitions. This approach is used for effectively
increasing the query performance while dealing with large database tables. To create a
partition, a key called partition key which is usually a table column or an expression, and
a partitioning method needs to be defined. There are three types of inbuilt partitioning
methods provided by Postgres:

● Range Partitioning: This method is done by partitioning based on a range of

values. This method is most commonly used upon date fields to get monthly,
weekly or yearly data. In the case of corner cases like value belonging to the end
of the range, for example: if the range of partition 1 is 10-20 and the range of
partition 2 is 20-30, and the given value is 10, then 10 belongs to the second
partition and not the first.
● List Partitioning: This method is used to partition based on a list of known values.
Most commonly used when we have a key with a categorical value. For example,
getting sales data based on regions divided as countries, cities, or states.
● Hash Partitioning: This method utilizes a hash function upon the partition key.
This is done when there are no specific requirements for data division and is
used to access data individually. For example, you want to access data based on
a specific product, then using hash partition would result in the dataset that we
require.
The type of partition key and the type of method used for partitioning determines how
positive the performance and the level of manageability of the partitioned table are.
6. How can we start, restart and stop the PostgreSQL server?
● To start the PostgreSQL server, we run:
service postgresql start
● Once the server is successfully started, we get the below message:
Starting PostgreSQL: ok
● To restart the PostgreSQL server, we run:
service postgresql restart
Once the server is successfully restarted, we get the message:

Restarting PostgreSQL: server stopped

ok
● To stop the server, we run the command:
service postgresql stop
Once stopped successfully, we get the message:

Stopping PostgreSQL: server stopped

ok
7. What is the command used for creating a database in PostgreSQL?
The first step of using PostgreSQL is to create a database. This is done by using the
createdb command as shown below: createdb db_name
After running the above command, if the database creation was successful, then the
below message is shown:

CREATE DATABASE
8. How will you change the datatype of a column?
This can be done by using the ALTER TABLE statement as shown below:

Syntax:

ALTER TABLE tname

ALTER COLUMN col_name [SET DATA] TYPE new_data_type;
9. How do you define Indexes in PostgreSQL?
Indexes are the inbuilt functions in PostgreSQL which are used by the queries to
perform search more efficiently on a table in the database. Consider that you have a
table with thousands of records and you have the below query that only a few records
can satisfy the condition, then it will take a lot of time to search and return those rows
that abide by this condition as the engine has to perform the search operation on every
single to check this condition. This is undoubtedly inefficient for a system dealing with
huge data. Now if this system had an index on the column where we are applying
search, it can use an efficient method for identifying matching rows by walking through
only a few levels. This is called indexing.

Select * from some_table where table_col=120

10. Define sequence.
A sequence is a schema-bound, user-defined object which aids to generate a sequence
of integers. This is most commonly used to generate values to identity columns in a
table. We can create a sequence by using the CREATE SEQUENCE statement as
shown below:

CREATE SEQUENCE serial_num START 100;

To get the next number 101 from the sequence, we use the nextval() method as shown
below:

SELECT nextval('serial_num');
We can also use this sequence while inserting new records using the INSERT
command:

INSERT INTO ib_table_name VALUES (nextval('serial_num'), 'interviewbit');

11. What are string constants in PostgreSQL?
They are character sequences bound within single quotes. These are using during data
insertion or updation to characters in the database.
There are special string constants that are quoted in dollars. Syntax:
$tag$<string_constant>$tag$ The tag in the constant is optional and when we are not
specifying the tag, the constant is called a double-dollar string literal.

12. How can you get a list of all databases in PostgreSQL?

This can be done by using the command \l -> backslash followed by the lower-case
letter L.

13. How can you delete a database in PostgreSQL?

This can be done by using the DROP DATABASE command as shown in the syntax
below:

DROP DATABASE database_name;

If the database has been deleted successfully, then the following message would be
shown:

DROP DATABASE
14. What are ACID properties? Is PostgreSQL compliant with ACID?
ACID stands for Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability. They are database
transaction properties which are used for guaranteeing data validity in case of errors
and failures.

● Atomicity: This property ensures that the transaction is completed in

all-or-nothing way.
● Consistency: This ensures that updates made to the database is valid and
follows rules and restrictions.
 ● Isolation: This property ensures integrity of transaction that are visible to all other
transactions.
● Durability: This property ensures that the committed transactions are stored
permanently in the database.
PostgreSQL is compliant with ACID properties.

15. Can you explain the architecture of PostgreSQL?

● The architecture of PostgreSQL follows the client-server model.
● The server side comprises of background process manager, query processer,
utilities and shared memory space which work together to build PostgreSQL’s
instance that has access to the data. The client application does the task of
connecting to this instance and requests data processing to the services. The
client can either be GUI (Graphical User Interface) or a web application. The
most commonly used client for PostgreSQL is pgAdmin.
16. What do you understand by multi-version concurrency control?
MVCC or Multi-version concurrency control is used for avoiding unnecessary database
locks when 2 or more requests tries to access or modify the data at the same time. This
ensures that the time lag for a user to log in to the database is avoided. The
transactions are recorded when anyone tries to access the content.

For more information regarding this, you can refer here.

17. What do you understand by command enable-debug?

The command enable-debug is used for enabling the compilation of all libraries and
applications. When this is enabled, the system processes get hindered and generally
also increases the size of the binary file. Hence, it is not recommended to switch this on
in the production environment. This is most commonly used by developers to debug the
bugs in their scripts and help them spot the issues. For more information regarding how
to debug, you can refer here.

18. How do you check the rows affected as part of previous

transactions?
SQL standards state that the following three phenomena should be prevented whilst
concurrent transactions. SQL standards define 4 levels of transaction isolations to deal
with these phenomena.

● Dirty reads: If a transaction reads data that is written due to concurrent

uncommitted transaction, these reads are called dirty reads.
● Phantom reads: This occurs when two same queries when executed separately
return different rows. For example, if transaction A retrieves some set of rows
matching search criteria. Assume another transaction B retrieves new rows in
addition to the rows obtained earlier for the same search criteria. The results are
different.
 ● Non-repeatable reads: This occurs when a transaction tries to read the same row
multiple times and gets different values each time due to concurrency. This
happens when another transaction updates that data and our current transaction
fetches that updated data, resulting in different values.
To tackle these, there are 4 standard isolation levels defined by SQL standards. They
are as follows:

● Read Uncommitted – The lowest level of the isolations. Here, the transactions
are not isolated and can read data that are not committed by other transactions
resulting in dirty reads.
● Read Committed – This level ensures that the data read is committed at any
instant of read time. Hence, dirty reads are avoided here. This level makes use of
read/write lock on the current rows which prevents read/write/update/delete of
that row when the current transaction is being operated on.
● Repeatable Read – The most restrictive level of isolation. This holds read and
write locks for all rows it operates on. Due to this, non-repeatable reads are
avoided as other transactions cannot read, write, update or delete the rows.
● Serializable – The highest of all isolation levels. This guarantees that the
execution is serializable where execution of any concurrent operations are
guaranteed to be appeared as executing serially.
The following table clearly explains which type of unwanted reads the levels avoid:

Isolation levels Dirty Reads Phantom Reads Non-repeatable reads

Read Might occur Might occur Might occur

Uncommitted
 Read Committed Won’t occur Might occur Might occur

Repeatable Read Won’t occur Might occur Won’t occur

Serializable Won’t occur Won’t occur Won’t occur

19. What can you tell about WAL (Write Ahead Logging)?
Write Ahead Logging is a feature that increases the database reliability by logging
changes before any changes are done to the database. This ensures that we have
enough information when a database crash occurs by helping to pinpoint to what point
the work has been complete and gives a starting point from the point where it was
discontinued.

For more information, you can refer here.

20. What is the main disadvantage of deleting data from an existing

table using the DROP TABLE command?
DROP TABLE command deletes complete data from the table along with removing the
complete table structure too. In case our requirement entails just remove the data, then
we would need to recreate the table to store data in it. In such cases, it is advised to use
the TRUNCATE command.

21. How do you perform case-insensitive searches using regular

expressions in PostgreSQL?
To perform case insensitive matches using a regular expression, we can use POSIX
(~*) expression from pattern matching operators. For example:

'interviewbit' ~* '.*INTervIewBit.*'
22. How will you take backup of the database in PostgreSQL?
We can achieve this by using the pg_dump tool for dumping all object contents in the
database into a single file. The steps are as follows:

Step 1: Navigate to the bin folder of the PostgreSQL installation path.

C:\>cd C:\Program Files\PostgreSQL\10.0\bin

Step 2: Execute pg_dump program to take the dump of data to a .tar folder as shown
below:

pg_dump -U postgres -W -F t sample_data >

C:\Users\admin\pgbackup\sample_data.tar
The database dump will be stored in the sample_data.tar file on the location specified.

23. Does PostgreSQL support full text search?

Full-Text Search is the method of searching single or collection of documents stored on
a computer in a full-text based database. This is mostly supported in advanced
database systems like SOLR or ElasticSearch. However, the feature is present but is
pretty basic in PostgreSQL.

24. What are parallel queries in PostgreSQL?

Parallel Queries support is a feature provided in PostgreSQL for devising query plans
capable of exploiting multiple CPU processors to execute the queries faster.
25. Differentiate between commit and checkpoint.
The commit action ensures that the data consistency of the transaction is maintained
and it ends the current transaction in the section. Commit adds a new record in the log
that describes the COMMIT to the memory. Whereas, a checkpoint is used for writing all
changes that were committed to disk up to SCN which would be kept in datafile headers
and control files.