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TOP 30
SQL
INTERVIEW
CODING TASKS
WITH WINNING SOLUTIONS
Matthew Urban
TOP 30 SQL Interview Coding Tasks with Winning Solutions
by Matthew Urban

Copyright © 2018 net-boss. All rights reserved.

Published by net-boss net-boss.org

August 2018: First Edition

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ISBN 978-83-65477-14-9
 Top 30 SQL Interview Coding Tasks With Winning Solutions

Preface

SQL is one of the most common programming languages used to manipulate

data. If you are a developer, there is a 99% probability that during a job inter-
view you will be asked to solve a couple of coding tasks from SQL. If you are
a recruiter, this book gives you a ready to use set of coding tasks with correct
answers.

Matthew Urban
IT specialist, Senior Java developer

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Matthew Urban

Data-set

From the perspective of a recruiter, it is easier to use the same data-set during
each job interview as is the case with this book. For simplicity, the database
schema of a small e-commerce system is used. It contains the following ta-
bles: customers, products, suppliers, orders and order_items. Each cod-
ing task described in this book is based on the data-set given below.

Table 1.1 – Example data-set of customers table.

customers
ID FIRST_NAME LAST_NAME EMAIL PHONE COUNTRY

1 Boris Spassky [email protected] 999-888-123 Russia

2 Akiba Rubinstein [email protected] NULL Poland

3 Bobby Fischer [email protected] 210-6221-9101-22 USA

4 Jose Capabalnca [email protected] 032-345-567-678 Cuba

Table 1.2 – Example data-set of products table.

products
ID NAME AVAILABLE PRICE SUPPLIER

1 Baby diaper true 12 Brandon

2 Crossland bike true 780 X-Bikes

3 Bicycle helmet true 50 X-Bikes

4 Energy drink false 5 Nutrition-V

5 LED bulb true 30 Electronics Master

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 Top 30 SQL Interview Coding Tasks With Winning Solutions

Table 1.3 – Example data-set of suppliers table.

suppliers
ID COMPANY_NAME CONTACT_NAME ADDRESS COUNTRY EMAIL

1 X-Bikes Malcom Xavery New York, Yellow 12 USA [email protected]

2 Brandon Veronica Brandon Chicago, Barbecue 780/2 USA [email protected]

Table 1.4 – Example data-set of orders table.

orders
ID ORDER_DATE SHIPPED_DATE CUSTOMER_ID

1 2014-11-25 2014-12-02 3

2 2016-12-02 2016-12-09 3

3 2017-02-10 2017-02-18 1

4 2018-03-10 2018-03-19 4

5 2019-09-20 2019-09-30 4

Table 1.5 – Example data-set of order_items table.

order_items

ORDER_ID PRODUCT_ID QUANTITY PRICE DISCOUNT

1 2 1 780 0

1 3 1 50 0

2 3 2 50 50

3 5 1 30 30

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Matthew Urban

1. Get data from the database.

The easiest way to verify if a person knows the basics of SQL is to ask them to
retrieve data from a database.

Solution
Given three tables: customers, products and orders you need to create
queries which retrieve all rows from them. Listing 1.1 presents simple SELECT
statements.

Listing 1.1 – Example of simple SELECT statements.

SELECT * FROM customers;

SELECT * FROM products;

SELECT * FROM orders;

Please notice that the wildcard (*) causes all columns to be retrieved. In many
cases, it is necessary to retrieve only part of the data. Listing 1.2 presents
an example SELECT statement which retrieves only the first and last name of
a customer.

Listing 1.2 – The SELECT statement which gets specified columns.

SELECT first_name, last_name FROM customers;

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 Top 30 SQL Interview Coding Tasks With Winning Solutions

2. Get data from the database using a

conditional statement.

Preparing conditional statements is one of the necessary skills every pro-

grammer must have. A developer needs to create queries which return only
those records that fulfill a specified condition. To retrieve filtered data, the
WHERE clause combined with AND, OR and NOT operators should be used.

WHERE
First, you are asked to prepare a query which returns all customers which are
from the USA.

Listing 2.1 – Example of SELECT statement with WHERE clause.

SELECT * FROM customers
WHERE country = 'USA';

OR
Second, you are asked to prepare a query which returns all customers which
are from the USA or Canada.

Listing 2.2 – Example of SELECT statement with OR operator.

SELECT * FROM customers
WHERE country = 'USA' OR country = 'Canada';

AND
Finally, the last most basic operator. You need to prepare a query which re-
turns all products from supplier ‘Brandon’ and price lower than $20.

Listing 2.3 – Example of SELECT statement with AND operator.

SELECT * FROM products
WHERE supplier = 'Brandon' AND price < 20;

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Matthew Urban

3. Get data from the database using the IN

operator.

The IN operator is very often used in SELECT statements. The IN operator can
be seen as shorthand for multiple OR conditions, but it can also take the re-
sults from other SELECT queries as input.

List of values
You are asked to prepare a query which returns all customers which are from
the following list of countries:

• USA,
• Canada,
• Australia,
• Great Britain,
• New Zealand.
Listing 3.1 presents the correct implementation of such a query.

Listing 3.1 – Example of SELECT statement with IN operator.

SELECT * FROM customers
WHERE country IN ('USA', 'Canada', 'Australia' , 'Great Britain',
'New Zealand');

Subquery
Another way to use the IN clause is to pass a list of values by selecting data
from another table. For example, you may be asked to retrieve products
which were sold in quantities higher than 100. Listing 3.2 presents an example
of such a query. From the order_items table, you retrieve a list of products
identifiers which sold more than 100 items in one order. Next, such a list is
passed to the IN clause. Finally, the SELECT statement returns all products
which match previously selected identifiers.

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 Top 30 SQL Interview Coding Tasks With Winning Solutions

Listing 3.2 – Example of subquery.

SELECT * FROM products
WHERE id IN (SELECT product_id FROM order_items
WHERE quantity > 100);

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Matthew Urban

4. Save data in the database.

A list of most basic data operations contains save, update, delete and read.
Each developer needs to be aware of how to save data in the database before
he can modify, delete or read it. To put new rows into an existing table, the
SQL provides the INSERT INTO statement.

INSERT INTO
In most cases during a job interview, you are asked to save a new customer
and a new product in the database. Listing 4.1 presents a correct solution.

Listing 4.1 – Examples of INSERT INTO statement.

INSERT INTO customers (first_name, last_name, email, phone, country)
VALUES ('John', 'Malkovich', '[email protected]', NULL, 'Mexico');

INSERT INTO products (name, available, price, supplier)

VALUES ('Bike', true, 465, 'T&D');

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 Top 30 SQL Interview Coding Tasks With Winning Solutions

5. Modify data in the database.

The UPDATE statement is used to modify existing records in the database. The
syntax of UPDATE allows you to modify selected columns in one or more rows
at once. If you do not specify the WHERE clause, all records are going to be
updated.

UPDATE
You are usually asked to prepare three UPDATE queries: one which modifies all
records, a second which modifies only a single record and a third which mod-
ifies a subset of data. For example, you need to write a query which removes
all phone numbers of all customers. Listing 5.1 presents a solution.

Listing 5.1 – Example of UPDATE statement which modifies all rows.

UPDATE customers
SET phone = NULL;

Next, you need to prepare a query which modifies the name of a product with
identifier 6, as presented in Listing 5.2.

Listing 5.2 – Example of UPDATE statement which modifies a single row.

UPDATE products
SET name = 'Crossland bike'
WHERE id = 6;

Finally, you are asked to prepare a query which modifies the shipping date of
all orders placed on 2018-09-15.

Listing 5.3 – Example of UPDATE statement which modifies multiple rows.

UPDATE orders
SET shipping_date = 2018-10-01
WHERE order_date = 2018-09-15;

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