SQL Server Interview Questions

Number: 1
Heading: SQL Server
Question: What is normalization? What are the different levels of normalization?
Answer: Normalizing a logical database design involves using formal methods to separate
the data into multiple, related tables. A greater number of narrow tables (with
fewer columns) is characteristic of a normalized database. A few wide tables (with
more columns) is characteristic of an nonnomalized database.

Level: SE/SSE

Number: 2
Heading: SQL Server
Question: What is denormalization and when would you go for it?
Answer: As the name indicates, denormalization is the reverse process of normalization. It's the
controlled introduction of redundancy in to the database design. It helps improve the
query performance as the number of joins could be reduced.
Comments:
Level: SE/SSE

Number: 3
Heading: SQL Server
Question: How do you implement one-to-one, one-to-many and many-to-many relationships while
designing tables?
Answer: One-to-One relationship can be implemented as a single table and rarely as two tables
with primary and foreign key relationships.
One-to-Many relationships are implemented by splitting the data into two tables with
primary key and foreign key relationships.
Many-to-Many relationships are implemented using a junction table with the keys from
both the tables forming the composite primary key of the junction table.
Comments:
Level: SE/SSE

Number: 4
Heading: SQL Server
Question: What's the difference between a primary key and a unique key?
Answer: Both primary key and unique enforce uniqueness of the column on which they are
defined. But by default primary key creates a clustered index on the column, where are
unique creates a nonclustered index by default. Another major difference is that, primary
key doesn't allow NULLs, but unique key allows one NULL only.
Comments:
Level: SE/SSE
Number: 5
Heading: SQL Server
Question: What are user defined datatypes and when you should go for them?
Answer: User defined datatypes let you extend the base SQL Server datatypes by providing a
descriptive name, and format to the database. Take for example, in your database, there is a
column called Flight_Num which appears in many tables. In all these tables it should be
varchar(8). In this case you could create a user defined datatype called Flight_num_type of
varchar(8) and use it across all your tables. 

Level: SE/SSE

Number: 6
Heading: SQL Server
Question: What is bit datatype and what's the information that can be stored inside a bit column?
Answer: Bit datatype is used to store boolean information like 1 or 0 (true or false). Untill SQL
Server 6.5 bit datatype could hold either a 1 or 0 and there was no support for NULL.
But from SQL Server 7.0 onwards, bit datatype can represent a third state, which is
NULL. 
Comments:
Level: SE/SSE

Number: 7
Heading: SQL Server
Question: What are defaults? Is there a column to which a default can't be bound
Answer: A default is a value that will be used by a column, if no value is supplied to that column
while inserting data. IDENTITY columns and timestamp columns can't have defaults
bound to them
Comments:
Level: SE

Number: 8
Heading: SQL Server
Question: What is a transaction and what are ACID properties?
Answer: A transaction is a logical unit of work in which, all the steps must be performed or none.
ACID stands for Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability. These are the properties of
a transaction

Level: SE/SSE

Number: 9
Heading: SQL Server
Question: Explain different isolation levels
Answer: An isolation level determines the degree of isolation of data between concurrent
transactions. The default SQL Server isolation level is Read Committed. Here are the other
isolation levels (in the ascending order of isolation): Read Uncommitted, Read Committed,
Repeatable Read, Serializable. See SQL Server books online for an explanation of the
isolation levels. Be sure to read about SET TRANSACTION ISOLATION LEVEL, which
lets you customize the isolation level at the connection level.

Level: SSE/TL

Number: 10
Heading: SQL Server
Question: CREATE INDEX myIndex ON myTable(myColumn)

What type of Index will get created after executing the above statement?
Answer: Non-clustered index. Important thing to note: By default a clustered index gets created
on the primary key, unless specified otherwise.
Comments: If the candidate seems reasonably aware, ask him to explain the
scenarios of when to use clustered indexes and when to use non
clustered indexes.
Level: SSE/TL

Number: 11
Heading: SQL Server
Question: What is lock escalation?
Answer: Lock escalation is the process of converting a lot of low level locks (like row locks, page
locks) into higher level locks (like table locks). Every lock is a memory structure too many
locks would mean, more memory being occupied by locks. To prevent this from
happening, SQL Server escalates the many fine-grain locks to fewer coarse-grain locks.
Lock escalation threshold was definable in SQL Server 6.5, but from SQL Server 7.0
onwards it's dynamically managed by SQL Server.

Level: SSE/TL

Number: 12
Heading: SQL Server
Question: What's the difference between DELETE TABLE and TRUNCATE TABLE commands?
Answer: DELETE TABLE is a logged operation, so the deletion of each row gets logged in the
transaction log, which makes it slow. TRUNCATE TABLE also deletes all the rows in a
table, but it won't log the deletion of each row, instead it logs the deallocation of the data
pages of the table, which makes it faster.
Number: 13
Heading: SQL Server
Question: What are constraints? Explain different types of constraints.
Answer: Constraints enable the RDBMS enforce the integrity of the database automatically,
without needing you to create triggers, rule or defaults.

Types of constraints: NOT NULL, CHECK, UNIQUE, PRIMARY KEY, FOREIGN

KEY
Comments:
Level: SE/SSE

Number: 14
Heading: SQL Server
Question: Whar is an index? What are the types of indexes? How many clustered indexes can be
created on a table? I create a separate index on each column of a table. what are the
advantages and disadvantages of this approach?
Answer: Indexes in SQL Server are similar to the indexes in books. They help SQL Server
retrieve the data quicker.

Indexes are of two types. Clustered indexes and non-clustered indexes. When you craete
a clustered index on a table, all the rows in the table are stored in the order of the
clustered index key. So, there can be only one clustered index per table. Non-clustered
indexes have their own storage separate from the table data storage. Non-clustered
indexes are stored as B-tree structures (so do clustered indexes), with the leaf level nodes
having the index key and it's row locater. The row located could be the RID or the
Clustered index key, depending up on the absence or presence of clustered index on the
table.

If you create an index on each column of a table, it improves the query performance, as
the query optimizer can choose from all the existing indexes to come up with an efficient
execution plan. At the same t ime, data modification operations (such as INSERT,
UPDATE, DELETE) will become slow, as every time data changes in the table, all the
indexes need to be updated. Another disadvantage is that, indexes need disk space, the
more indexes you have, more disk space is used.
Comments:
Level: SSE/TL

Number: 15
Heading: SQL Server
Question: What is RAID and what are different types of RAID configurations?
Answer: RAID stands for Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks, used to provide fault tolerance
to database servers. There are six RAID levels 0 through 5 offering different levels of
performance, fault tolerance
Comments: Typically a DBA Question.
Level: SSE/TL

Number: 16
Heading: SQL Server
Question: What are the steps you will take to improve performance of a poor performing query?
Answer: This is a very open ended question and there could be a lot of reasons behind the poor
performance of a query. But some general issues would be: No indexes, table scans,
missing or out of date statistics, blocking, excess recompilations of stored procedures,
procedures and triggers without SET NOCOUNT ON, poorly written query with
unnecessarily complicated joins, too much normalization, excess usage of cursors and
temporary tables.

Some of the tools/ways that help troubleshooting performance problems are: SET
SHOWPLAN_ALL ON, SET SHOWPLAN_TEXT ON, SET STATISTICS IO ON,
SQL Server Profiler, Windows NT /2000 Performance monitor, Graphical execution
plan in Query Analyzer.
Comments:
Level: SSE/TL

Number: 17
Heading: SQL Server
Question: What is a deadlock and what is a live lock? How will you go about resolving deadlocks?
Answer: Deadlock is a situation when two processes, each having a lock on one piece of data,
attempt to acquire a lock on the other's piece. Each process would wait indefinitely for
the other to release the lock, unless one of the user processes is terminated. SQL Server
detects deadlocks and terminates one user's process.

A livelock is one, where a  request for an exclusive lock is repeatedly denied because a
series of overlapping shared locks keeps interfering. SQL Server detects the situation
after four denials and refuses further shared locks. A livelock also occurs when read
transactions monopolize a table or page, forcing a write transaction to wait indefinitely.
Comments:
Level: SSE/TL

Number: 18
Heading: SQL Server
Question: What are statistics, under what circumstances they go out of date, and how do you
update them?
Answer: Statistics determine the selectivity of the indexes. If an indexed column has unique
values then the selectivity of that index is more, as opposed to an index with non-unique
values. Query optimizer uses these indexes in determining whether to choose an index or
not while executing a query. 

Some situations under which you should update statistics:

1) If there is significant change in the key values in the index
2) If a large amount of data in an indexed column has been added, changed, or removed
(that is, if the distribution of key values has changed), or the table has been truncated
using the TRUNCATE TABLE statement and then repopulated
3) Database is upgraded from a previous version
Comments: Typically a DBA Question.
Level: SSE/TL
Number: 19
Heading: SQL Server
Question: What are the different ways of moving data/databases between servers and databases in
SQL Server?
Answer: There are lots of options available, you have to choose your option depending upon your
requirements. Some of the options you have are: BACKUP/RESTORE, dettaching and
attaching databases, replication, DTS, BCP, logshipping, INSERT...SELECT,
SELECT...INTO, creating INSERT scripts to generate data.
Comments:
Level: SSE/TL

Number: 20
Heading: SQL Server
Question: Explian different types of BACKUPs avaialabe in SQL Server? Given a particular
scenario, how would you go about choosing a backup plan?
Answer: Types of backups you can create in SQL Sever 7.0+ are Full database backup,
differential database backup, transaction log backup, filegroup backup
Comments: Typically a DBA Question.
Level: SSE/TL