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20 Essential SQL Interview Questions

The document contains 20 SQL-related questions covering various topics such as querying, data manipulation, database design, and optimization techniques. It includes tasks like selecting highest-paid employees, finding duplicates, computing monthly sales, and explaining JOIN types. Additionally, it addresses advanced concepts like transactions, UPSERT operations, and handling JSON data in PostgreSQL.

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5 views2 pages

20 Essential SQL Interview Questions

The document contains 20 SQL-related questions covering various topics such as querying, data manipulation, database design, and optimization techniques. It includes tasks like selecting highest-paid employees, finding duplicates, computing monthly sales, and explaining JOIN types. Additionally, it addresses advanced concepts like transactions, UPSERT operations, and handling JSON data in PostgreSQL.

Uploaded by

helib76466
Copyright
© All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

20 SQL Questions

1. Write an SQL query to select the top 5 highest-paid employees from an Employee table
(fields: id, name, salary).

2. How do you find duplicate rows in a table based on a single column? Provide an example
query.

3. Given Orders(order_id, customer_id, order_date, total), write a query to compute


monthly sales for the last 12 months.

4. Explain how an INNER JOIN differs from LEFT JOIN and provide example queries for both.

5. Write a query to delete rows older than 30 days from a table named sessions with a
column created_at.

6. How do you add a unique constraint to an existing table? Provide the ALTER TABLE
statement.

7. Given a Products table, write a query to get the second highest price without using
LIMIT with offset (use a subquery).

8. Explain the difference between WHERE and HAVING with examples.

9. How to pivot rows into columns in SQL (for example, turning product sales by month into
columns)?

10. Write a query to find the running total of sales ordered by order_date using window
functions.

11. How do you optimize a slow query? List at least five approaches and explain briefly.

12. Write a query to find customers who have never placed an order (Customers and Orders
tables).

13. Explain transactions and isolation levels; give examples of anomalies (dirty read,
non-repeatable read, phantom read).

14. How to perform an UPSERT (insert or update) in SQL (give examples for PostgreSQL and
MySQL).

15. Given a large table, how would you remove duplicate rows while keeping one copy?

16. Explain indexes: B-tree vs hash indexes, and when to use each.

17. Write a query to get the nth row per group (for example, the top 3 orders per
customer).

18. Describe how to design a normalized schema for a blog system (posts, comments, tags)
up to 3NF.
19. How to safely perform schema migrations in production with zero-downtime strategies?

20. Given a table with JSON column (Postgres), show how to query nested JSON fields and
index them.

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