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an organized collection of data, stored and retrieved digitally from a remote or local
What is a database?
computer system.

DBMS stands for Database Management System. DBMS is a system software

responsible for the creation, retrieval, updation and management of the database. It
What is a DBMS?
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 softwares.

Relational Data Base Management Systems (RDBMS) are database management

systems that maintain data records and indices in tables. Relationships may be created
and maintained across and among the data and tables. In a relational database,
relationships between data items are expressed by means of tables.
What is RDBMS?
Interdependencies among these tables are expressed by data values rather than by
pointers. This allows a high degree of data independence. An RDBMS has the
capability to recombine the data items from different files, providing powerful tools for
data usage. (Read more here)

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
DBMS vs RDBMS 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.

SQL stands for Structured Query Language. SQL lets you access and manipulate
What is SQL?
databases.

SQL is a standard language for retrieving and manipulating structured databases. On

What is the difference between SQL and
the contrary, MySQL is a relational database management system, like SQL Server,
MySQL?
Oracle or IBM DB2, that is used to manage SQL databases.

A table is an organized collection of data stored in the form of rows and columns.
What are Tables and Fields? 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.
 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 creation of table or after
creationg 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.
What are Constraints in SQL? 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.

A field (or group of fields) that uniquely identifies a given entity in a table
/ Create table with a single field as primary key /

CREATE TABLE Students (

ID INT NOT NULL
Name VARCHAR(255)
PRIMARY KEY (ID)
);
/ Create table with multiple fields as primary key /

CREATE TABLE Students (

ID INT NOT NULL
LastName VARCHAR(255)
FirstName VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL,
What is a Primary Key?
CONSTRAINT PK_Student
PRIMARY KEY (ID, FirstName)
);

/ Set a column as primary key /

ALTER TABLE Students

ADD PRIMARY KEY (ID);

/ Set multiple columns as primary key /

ALTER TABLE Students

ADD CONSTRAINT PK_Student /Naming a Primary Key/ PRIMARY KEY (ID,
FirstName);
 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 with a single field as unique /
CREATE TABLE Students (ID INT NOT NULL UNIQUE Name VARCHAR(255) );

/ Create table with multiple fields as unique /

CREATE TABLE Students ( ID INT NOT NULL LastName VARCHAR(255) FirstName

What is a UNIQUE constraint?
VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL CONSTRAINT PK_Student UNIQUE (ID, FirstName) );

/ Set a column as unique /

ALTER TABLE Students ADD UNIQUE (ID);

/ Set multiple columns as unique /

ALTER TABLE Students
ADD CONSTRAINT PK_Student / Naming a unique constraint / UNIQUE (ID,
FirstName);

A primary key of one table that appears as an attribute in another table and acts to
provide a logical relationship between the two tables
/ Create table with foreign key - Way 1 /

CREATE TABLE Students (

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

/ Create table with foreign key - Way 2 /

. What is a Foreign Key?

CREATE TABLE Students (

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

/ Add a new foreign key /

ALTER TABLE Students
ADD FOREIGN KEY (LibraryID)
REFERENCES Library (LibraryID);
 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.
What is a Join? List its different types. 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;

Self-join is set to be query used to compare to itself. This is used to compare values in
a column with other values in the same column in the same table. ALIAS ES can be
used for the same table comparison.

What is a self join?

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;

A cross join does not have a WHERE or ON clause, therefore it produces the
Cartesian product of the tables involved in the join. The size of a Cartesian product
result set is the number of rows in the first table multiplied by the number of rows in the
second table.
What is a cross join?

SELECT stu.name, sub.subject

FROM students AS stu
CROSS JOIN subjects AS sub;
 A database index is a data structure that provides 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 /

CREATE INDEX index_name

ON table_name (column_1, column_2);

/ Drop Index /

DROP INDEX index_name;

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
What is an Index? Explain its different types.
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 correspond 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 index can improve the performance of most query operations because
they provide a linear-access path to data stored in the database.

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. Non-clustered index creates a separate entity within the table which
references the original table.
What is the difference between Clustered
and Non-clustered index?
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.

What is Data Integrity? Data being ACCURATE and CONSISTENT throughout its life.
 A command to retrieve data from tables

/ select query /

SELECT fname, lname

FROM myDb.students
What is a query?
WHERE student_id = 1;
/ action query /

UPDATE myDB.students
SET fname = 'Captain', lname = 'America'
WHERE student_id = 1;

A subquery is a SQL query nested inside a larger query.

SELECT name, email, mob, address
FROM myDb.contacts
WHERE roll_no IN (
SELECT roll_no
FROM myDb.students
WHERE subject = 'Maths');
What is a subquery?
There are two types of subquery - Correlated and Non-Correlated.

A correlated subquery cannot be considered as an independent query, but it can

refer 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 subquery is substituted in the main query.

A statement that retrieves data from the database.

What is the SELECT statement?
SELECT * FROM myDB.students;
 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;

What are some common clauses used with

GROUP BY clause in SQL is used to group records with identical data and can be
SELECT query in SQL?
used in conjuction 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 WHERE clause cannot filter aggregated
records.

SELECT COUNT(studentId), country

FROM myDB.students
WHERE country != "INDIA"
GROUP BY country HAVING COUNT(studentID) > 5;
 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

/ Fetch the union of queries /

SELECT name FROM Students

UNION
What are UNION, MINUS and INTERSECT
SELECT name FROM Contacts;
commands?

/ Fetch the union of queries with duplicates/

SELECT name FROM Students

UNION ALL
SELECT name FROM Contacts;

/ Fetch names from students /

SELECT name FROM Students

MINUS
/ that aren't present in contacts /
SELECT name FROM Contacts;

/ Fetch names from students /

SELECT name FROM Students

INTERSECT
/ that are present in contacts as well /
SELECT name FROM Contacts;
 A cursor is a database object used by applications to manipulate data in a set on a
row-by-row basis, instead of the typical SQL commands that operate on all the rows in
the set at one time.
In order to work with a cursor, we need to perform some steps in the following order:

Working with SQL Cursor

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

/ Declare All Required Variables /

DECLARE @name VARCHAR(50)

What is a cursor?
/ Declare Cursor Name/

DECLARE db_cursor CURSOR FOR

SELECT name
FROM myDB.students
WHERE parent_name IN ('Sara', 'Ansh')

/ Open cursor and Fetch data into @name /

OPEN db_cursor
FETCH next
FROM db_cursor
INTO @name

/ Close the cursor and deallocate the resources /

CLOSE db_cursor
DEALLOCATE db_cursor

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.
What are Entities/Relationships

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

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.
What is an Alias in SQL?

/ Alias using AS keyword /

SELECT A.emp_name AS "Employee"

B.emp_name AS "Supervisor"
FROM employee A, employee B
/ Alias without AS keyword /
WHERE A.emp_sup = B.emp_id;

A view in SQL is a virtual table based on the result-set of an SQL statement. A view
What is 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.

Converting poorly structured tables into two or more well-structured tables

Each table should only have 1 "theme"
OR

What is normalization?
Normalization represents the way of organizing structured data in the database
efficiently. It includes 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.

the process of transforming a logical data model into a physical model is efficient for
the most-often-needed tasks

OR

Denormalization is the inverse process of normalization, where the normalized

What is denormalization? schema is converted into a schema which 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
query processor by an over-normalized structure.

What are the various forms of Normalization? Q29

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 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.
What are the TRUNCATE, DELETE and
DROP statements? 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 is deleted and the table structure is removed from the
database.

DROP TABLE Candidates;

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
What is the difference between DROP and and constraints, access privileges and other grants that the table has. To create and
TRUNCATE statements? 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.

The TRUNCATE command is used to delete all the rows from the table and free the
space containing the table.
What is the difference between DELETE and
The DELETE command deletes only the rows from the table based on the condition
TRUNCATE statements?
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.

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.
What are Aggregate and Scalar functions?

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 given length.
ROUND() - Calculates the round off integer value for a numeric field (or decimal
point values).
NOW() - Returns the current data & time.
FORMAT() - Sets the format to display a collection of values.
 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:
What is User-defined function? What are its Scalar Function: As explained earlier, user-defined scalar functions return a single
various types? 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.

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,
What is OLTP? 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

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
What are the differences between OLTP
and return relatively few records. Number of transactions per second acts as an
and OLAP?
effective measure for such systems.
OLAP stands for Online Analytical Processing, a class of software programs which are
characterized by 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.

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:
What is Collation? What are the different Case sensitivity: A and a are treated differently.
types of Collation Sensitivity? 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 double-
byte (full-width) are treated differently.

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
What is a Stored Procedure?
directly can be granted access via stored procedures.

DELIMITER $$ CREATE PROCEDURE FetchAllStudents() BEGIN

SELECT * FROM myDB.students;
END $$ DELIMITER ;
 A stored procedure which 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

What is a Recursive Stored Procedure? ) 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 ;

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
How to create empty tables with the same structure to accept the fetched records but since no records get fetched due to the
structure as another table? WHERE clause in action, nothing is inserted into the new table.

SELECT * INTO Students_copy

FROM Students WHERE 1 = 2;
 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.
1 Using the % wildcard to perform a simple searchThe % 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%'
2 Omitting the patterns using the NOT keywordUse 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%'
What is Pattern Matching in SQL? 3 Matching a pattern anywhere using the % wildcard twiceSearch 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%'
4 Using the _ wildcard to match pattern at a specific positionThe _ 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%'
5 Matching patterns for specific lengthThe _ 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 '____'