80 SQL Queries
80 SQL Queries
Examples
Frequently asked basic and advanced Top 80 + SQL Queries Interview Questions and Answers
with Examples for Business Analyst, Data Analyst, DBA, Freshers and Experienced Java, PHP,
Dot Net programmers in Oracle, MySQL and MS SQL Database.
Are you an Experienced Programmer or Database Administrator ? If so, visit our Interview
Questions on Advanced and Complex SQL Querysection of this article. For each question, if the
SQL Commands differ for Oracle, MySQL and SQL Server Databases, specific queries with
respect to a database is provided. If the answers are same for all databases, only one query is
specified. Interview Questions on SQL are based on following two tables, Employee Table and
Employee Incentive Table.
9. Get FIRST_NAME from employee table after removing white spaces from right side
10. Get FIRST_NAME from employee table after removing white spaces from left side
13. Get First_Name and Last_Name as single column from employee table separated by a
'_'
SQL Server Equivalent of MySQL concat is '+', Query : Select FIRST_NAME + '_'
+LAST_NAME from EMPLOYEE
14. Get FIRST_NAME ,Joining year,Joining Month and Joining Date from employee table
15. Get all employee details from the employee table order by First_Name Ascending
Select * from employee order by FIRST_NAME asc
16. Get all employee details from the employee table order by First_Name descending
17. Get all employee details from the employee table order by First_Name Ascending and
Salary descending
Select * from employee order by FIRST_NAME asc,SALARY desc
19. Get employee details from employee table whose employee name are “John” and “Roy”
Select * from EMPLOYEE where FIRST_NAME in ('John','Roy')
20. Get employee details from employee table whose employee name are not “John” and
“Roy”
Select * from EMPLOYEE where FIRST_NAME not in ('John','Roy')
22. Get employee details from employee table whose first name contains 'o'
23. Get employee details from employee table whose first name ends with 'n'
24. Get employee details from employee table whose first name ends with 'n' and name
contains 4 letters
25. Get employee details from employee table whose first name starts with 'J' and name
contains 4 letters
26. Get employee details from employee table whose Salary greater than 600000
28. Get employee details from employee table whose Salary between 500000 and 800000
29. Get employee details from employee table whose name is 'John' and 'Michael'
30. Get employee details from employee table whose joining year is “2013”
31. Get employee details from employee table whose joining month is “January”
SQL Queries in Oracle, Select * from EMPLOYEE where
to_char(joining_date,'MM')='01' or Select * from EMPLOYEE where
to_char(joining_date,'Mon')='Jan'
33. Get employee details from employee table who joined after January 31st
SQL Queries in Oracle, Select * from EMPLOYEE where JOINING_DATE
>to_date('31/01/2013','dd/mm/yyyy')
SQL Queries in SQL Server and MySQL (Format - “MM/DD/YYYY”), Select * from
EMPLOYEE where joining_date >'01/31/2013'
37. Get difference between JOINING_DATE and INCENTIVE_DATE from employee and
incentives table
SQL Queries in Oracle, Select FIRST_NAME from employee where Last_Name like
'%?%%'
SQL Queries in SQL Server, Select FIRST_NAME from employee where Last_Name
like '%[%]%'
SQL Queries in MySQL, Select FIRST_NAME from employee where Last_Name like
'%\%%'
40. Get Last Name from employee table after replacing special character with white space
SQL Queries in Oracle, Select translate(LAST_NAME,'%',' ') from employee
SQL Queries in SQL Server and MySQL, Select REPLACE(LAST_NAME,'%',' ') from
employee
42. Get department,total salary with respect to a department from employee table order by
total salary descending
Select DEPARTMENT,sum(SALARY) Total_Salary from employee group by DEPARTMENT
order by Total_Salary descending
44. Get department wise average salary from employee table order by salary ascending
46. Get department wise minimum salary from employee table order by salary ascending
47. Select no of employees joined with respect to year and month from employee table
48. Select department,total salary with respect to a department from employee table where
total salary greater than 800000 order by Total_Salary descending
49. Select employee details from employee table if data exists in incentive table ?
Explanation : Here "exists" statement helps us to do the job of If statement. Main query will get
executed if the sub query returns at least one row. So we can consider the sub query as "If
condition" and the main query as "code block" inside the If condition. We can use any SQL
commands (Joins, Group By , having etc) in sub query. This command will be useful in queries
which need to detect an event and do some activity.
50. How to fetch data that are common in two query results ?
select * from EMPLOYEE where EMPLOYEE_ID INTERSECT select * from EMPLOYEE
where EMPLOYEE_ID < 4
Explanation : Here "INTERSECT" command is used to fetch data that are common in 2 queries.
In this example, we had taken EMPLOYEE table in both the queries.We can apply INTERSECT
command on different tables. The result of the above query will return employee details of
"ROY" because, employee id of ROY is 3, and both query results have the information about
ROY.
51. Get Employee ID's of those employees who didn't receive incentives without using sub
query ?
select EMPLOYEE_ID from EMPLOYEE
MINUS
select EMPLOYEE_REF_ID from INCENTIVES
Explanation : To filter out certain information we use MINUS command. What MINUS
Command odes is that, it returns all the results from the first query, that are not part of the
second query. In our example, first three employees received the incentives. So query will return
employee id's 4 to 8.
52. Select 20 % of salary from John , 10% of Salary for Roy and for other 15 % of salary
from employee table
SELECT FIRST_NAME, CASE FIRST_NAME WHEN 'John' THEN SALARY * .2 WHEN 'Roy'
THEN SALARY * .10 ELSE SALARY * .15 END "Deduced_Amount" FROM EMPLOYEE
Explanation : Here, we are using "SQL CASE" statement to achieve the desired results. After
case statement, we had to specify the column on which filtering is applied. In our case it is
"FIRST_NAME". And in then condition, specify the name of filter like John, Roy etc. To handle
conditions outside our filter, use else block where every one other than John and Roy enters.
53. Select Banking as 'Bank Dept', Insurance as 'Insurance Dept' and Services as 'Services
Dept' from employee table
Explanation : Here "DECODE" keyword is used to specify the alias name. In oracle we had
specify, Column Name followed by Actual Name and Alias Name as arguments. In SQL Server
and MySQL, we can use the earlier switch case statements for alias names.
54. Delete employee data from employee table who got incentives in incentive table
Explanation : Trick about this question is that we can't delete data from a table based on some
condition in another table by joining them. Here to delete multiple entries from EMPLOYEE
table, we need to use Subquery. Entries will get deleted based on the result of Subquery.
55. Insert into employee table Last Name with " ' " (Single Quote - Special Character)
Tip - Use another single quote before special character
Insert into employee (LAST_NAME) values ('Test''')
56. Select Last Name from employee table which contain only numbers
Explanation : In order to achieve the desired result, we use "ASCII" property of the database. If
we get results for a column using Lower and Upper commands, ASCII of both results will be
same for numbers. If there is any alphabets in the column, results will differ.
57. Write a query to rank employees based on their incentives for a month
Explanation : In order to rank employees based on their rank for a month, "DENSE_RANK"
keyword is used. Here partition by keyword helps us to sort the column with which filtering is
done. Rank is provided to the column specified in the order by statement. The above query ranks
employees with respect to their incentives for a given month.
Explanation : We need to join Employee and Incentive Table for updating the incentive amount.
But for update statement joining query wont work. We need to use sub query to update the data
in the incentive table. SQL Query is as shown below.
59. Select first_name, incentive amount from employee and incentives table for those
employees who have incentives
60. Select first_name, incentive amount from employee and incentives table for those
employees who have incentives and incentive amount greater than 3000
Select FIRST_NAME,INCENTIVE_AMOUNT from employee a inner join incentives B on
A.EMPLOYEE_ID=B.EMPLOYEE_REF_ID and INCENTIVE_AMOUNT >3000
61. Select first_name, incentive amount from employee and incentives table for all
employes even if they didn't get incentives
Select FIRST_NAME,INCENTIVE_AMOUNT from employee a left join incentives B on
A.EMPLOYEE_ID=B.EMPLOYEE_REF_ID
62. Select first_name, incentive amount from employee and incentives table for all
employees even if they didn't get incentives and set incentive amount as 0 for those
employees who didn't get incentives.
SQL Queries in Oracle, Select FIRST_NAME,nvl(INCENTIVE_AMOUNT,0) from
employee a left join incentives B on A.EMPLOYEE_ID=B.EMPLOYEE_REF_ID
SQL Queries in Oracle, select * from (select * from employee order by SALARY
desc) where rownum <3
SQL Queries in SQL Server, select top 2 * from employee order by salary desc
SQL Queries in MySQL, select * from employee order by salary desc limit 2
SQL Queries in Oracle, select * from (select * from employee order by SALARY
desc) where rownum <N + 1
SQL Queries in SQL Server, select top N * from employee
SQL Queries in MySQL, select * from employee order by salary desc limit N
SQL Queries in Oracle, select min(salary) from (select * from (select * from
employee order by SALARY desc) where rownum <3)
SQL Queries in SQL Server, select min(SALARY) from (select top 2 * from
employee) a
SQL Queries in MySQL, select min(SALARY) from (select * from employee order
by salary desc limit 2) a
SQL Queries in Oracle, select min(salary) from (select * from (select * from
employee order by SALARY desc) where rownum <N + 1)
SQL Queries in SQL Server, select min(SALARY) from (select top N * from
employee) a
SQL Queries in MySQL, select min(SALARY) from (select * from employee order
by salary desc limit N) a
Both UNION and UNION ALL is used to select information from structurally
similar tables. That means corresponding columns specified in the union
should have same data type. For example, in the above query, if FIRST_NAME is
DOUBLE and LAST_NAME is STRING above query wont work. Since the data type of
both the columns are VARCHAR, union is made possible. Difference between
UNION and UNION ALL is that , UNION query return only distinct values.
76. Write Sql Syntax to create EMPLOYEE_REF_ID in INCENTIVES table as foreign key
with respect to EMPLOYEE_ID in employee table
79. Write Sql syntax to create Oracle Trigger before insert of each row in employee table
Create materialized view log for fast refresh. Following materialized view
script wont get executed if materialized view log doesn't exists
SQL Injection is one of the the techniques uses by hackers to hack a website
by injecting SQL commands in data fields.