SQL Queries Interview Questions - Oracle Part 1

As a database developer, writing SQL queries, PLSQL code is part of daily life. Having a good knowledge on SQL is really important. Here i am posting some practical examples on SQL queries. To solve these interview questions on SQL queries you have to create the products, sales tables in your oracle database. The "Create Table", "Insert" statements are provided below.

CREATE TABLE PRODUCTS ( PRODUCT_ID PRODUCT_NAME ); CREATE TABLE SALES ( SALE_ID PRODUCT_ID YEAR Quantity PRICE ); INTEGER, INTEGER, INTEGER, INTEGER, INTEGER INTEGER, VARCHAR2(30)

INSERT INTO PRODUCTS VALUES ( 100, 'Nokia'); INSERT INTO PRODUCTS VALUES ( 200, 'IPhone'); INSERT INTO PRODUCTS VALUES ( 300, 'Samsung'); INSERT INTO PRODUCTS VALUES ( 400, 'LG');

INSERT INTO SALES VALUES ( 1, 100, 2010, 25, 5000);

INSERT INTO SALES VALUES ( 2, 100, 2011, 16, 5000); INSERT INTO SALES VALUES ( 3, 100, 2012, 8, 5000);

INSERT INTO SALES VALUES ( 4, 200, 2010, 10, 9000); INSERT INTO SALES VALUES ( 5, 200, 2011, 15, 9000); INSERT INTO SALES VALUES ( 6, 200, 2012, 20, 9000); INSERT INTO SALES VALUES ( 7, 300, 2010, 20, 7000); INSERT INTO SALES VALUES ( 8, 300, 2011, 18, 7000); INSERT INTO SALES VALUES ( 9, 300, 2012, 20, 7000); COMMIT;

The products table contains the below data.

SELECT * FROM PRODUCTS;

PRODUCT_ID PRODUCT_NAME ----------------------100 200 300 Nokia IPhone Samsung

The sales table contains the following data.

SELECT * FROM SALES;

SALE_ID PRODUCT_ID YEAR QUANTITY PRICE -------------------------------------1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 100 100 100 200 200 200 300 300 300 2010 2011 2012 2010 2011 2012 2010 2011 2012 25 16 8 10 15 20 20 18 20 5000 5000 5000 9000 9000 9000 7000 7000 7000

Here Quantity is the number of products sold in each year. Price is the sale price of each product. I hope you have created the tables in your oracle database. Now try to solve the below SQL queries. 1. Write a SQL query to find the products which have continuous increase in sales every year? Solution: Here Iphone is the only product whose sales are increasing every year. STEP1: First we will get the previous year sales for each product. The SQL query to do this is

SELECT P.PRODUCT_NAME, S.YEAR, S.QUANTITY, LEAD(S.QUANTITY,1,0) OVER ( PARTITION BY P.PRODUCT_ID ORDER BY S.YEAR DESC

) QUAN_PREV_YEAR FROM PRODUCTS P, SALES S WHERE P.PRODUCT_ID = S.PRODUCT_ID;

PRODUCT_NAME YEAR QUANTITY QUAN_PREV_YEAR ----------------------------------------Nokia Nokia Nokia IPhone IPhone IPhone Samsung Samsung Samsung 2012 2011 2010 2012 2011 2010 2012 2011 2010 8 16 25 20 15 10 20 18 20 16 25 0 15 10 0 18 20 0

Here the lead analytic function will get the quantity of a product in its previous year. STEP2: We will find the difference between the quantities of a product with its previous years quantity. If this difference is greater than or equal to zero for all the rows, then the product is a constantly increasing in sales. The final query to get the required result is

SELECT PRODUCT_NAME FROM (

SELECT P.PRODUCT_NAME, S.QUANTITY LEAD(S.QUANTITY,1,0) OVER ( PARTITION BY P.PRODUCT_ID ORDER BY S.YEAR DESC ) QUAN_DIFF FROM PRODUCTS P, SALES S WHERE )A GROUP BY PRODUCT_NAME HAVING MIN(QUAN_DIFF) >= 0; P.PRODUCT_ID = S.PRODUCT_ID

PRODUCT_NAME -----------IPhone

2. Write a SQL query to find the products which does not have sales at all? Solution: LG is the only product which does not have sales at all. This can be achieved in three ways. Method1: Using left outer join.

SELECT P.PRODUCT_NAME FROM PRODUCTS P

LEFT OUTER JOIN SALES S ON WHERE (P.PRODUCT_ID = S.PRODUCT_ID); S.QUANTITY IS NULL

PRODUCT_NAME -----------LG

Method2: Using the NOT IN operator.

SELECT P.PRODUCT_NAME FROM WHERE PRODUCTS P P.PRODUCT_ID NOT IN (SELECT DISTINCT PRODUCT_ID FROM SALES);

PRODUCT_NAME -----------LG

Method3: Using the NOT EXISTS operator.

SELECT P.PRODUCT_NAME FROM PRODUCTS P

WHERE

NOT EXISTS (SELECT 1 FROM SALES S WHERE S.PRODUCT_ID = P.PRODUCT_ID);

PRODUCT_NAME -----------LG

3. Write a SQL query to find the products whose sales decreased in 2012 compared to 2011? Solution: Here Nokia is the only product whose sales decreased in year 2012 when compared with the sales in the year 2011. The SQL query to get the required output is

SELECT P.PRODUCT_NAME FROM PRODUCTS P, SALES S_2012, SALES S_2011 WHERE AND AND AND AND P.PRODUCT_ID = S_2012.PRODUCT_ID S_2012.YEAR = 2012 S_2011.YEAR = 2011 S_2012.PRODUCT_ID = S_2011.PRODUCT_ID S_2012.QUANTITY < S_2011.QUANTITY;

PRODUCT_NAME ------------

Nokia

4. Write a query to select the top product sold in each year? Solution: Nokia is the top product sold in the year 2010. Similarly, Samsung in 2011 and IPhone, Samsung in 2012. The query for this is

SELECT PRODUCT_NAME, YEAR FROM ( SELECT P.PRODUCT_NAME, S.YEAR, RANK() OVER ( PARTITION BY S.YEAR ORDER BY S.QUANTITY DESC ) RNK FROM PRODUCTS P, SALES S WHERE ) A WHERE RNK = 1; P.PRODUCT_ID = S.PRODUCT_ID

PRODUCT_NAME YEAR --------------------

Nokia Samsung IPhone Samsung

2010 2011 2012 2012

5. Write a query to find the total sales of each product.? Solution: This is a simple query. You just need to group by the data on PRODUCT_NAME and then find the sum of sales.

SELECT P.PRODUCT_NAME, NVL( SUM( S.QUANTITY*S.PRICE ), 0) TOTAL_SALES FROM PRODUCTS P LEFT OUTER JOIN SALES S ON (P.PRODUCT_ID = S.PRODUCT_ID)

GROUP BY P.PRODUCT_NAME;

PRODUCT_NAME TOTAL_SALES --------------------------LG IPhone Samsung Nokia 0 405000 406000 245000

SQL Queries Interview Questions - Oracle Part 2

This is continuation to my previous post, SQL Queries Interview Questions - Oracle Part 1, Where i have used PRODUCTS and SALES tables as an example. Here also i am using the same tables. So, just take a look at the tables by going through that link and it will be easy for you to understand the questions mentioned here. Solve the below examples by writing SQL queries. 1. Write a query to find the products whose quantity sold in a year should be greater than the average quantity sold across all the years? Solution: This can be solved with the help of correlated query. The SQL query for this is

SELECT P.PRODUCT_NAME, S.YEAR, S.QUANTITY FROM PRODUCTS P, SALES S WHERE AND P.PRODUCT_ID = S.PRODUCT_ID S.QUANTITY > (SELECT AVG(QUANTITY) FROM SALES S1 WHERE S1.PRODUCT_ID = S.PRODUCT_ID );

PRODUCT_NAME YEAR QUANTITY -------------------------Nokia IPhone 2010 2012 25 20

Samsung Samsung

2012 2010

20 20

2. Write a query to compare the products sales of "IPhone" and "Samsung" in each year? The output should look like as

YEAR IPHONE_QUANT SAM_QUANT IPHONE_PRICE SAM_PRICE --------------------------------------------------2010 2011 2012 10 15 20 20 18 20 9000 9000 9000 7000 7000 7000

Solution: By using self-join SQL query we can get the required result. The required SQL query is

SELECT S_I.YEAR, S_I.QUANTITY IPHONE_QUANT, S_S.QUANTITY SAM_QUANT, S_I.PRICE S_S.PRICE FROM PRODUCTS P_I, SALES S_I, PRODUCTS P_S, SALES S_S WHERE P_I.PRODUCT_ID = S_I.PRODUCT_ID IPHONE_PRICE, SAM_PRICE

AND AND AND AND

P_S.PRODUCT_ID = S_S.PRODUCT_ID P_I.PRODUCT_NAME = 'IPhone' P_S.PRODUCT_NAME = 'Samsung' S_I.YEAR = S_S.YEAR

3. Write a query to find the ratios of the sales of a product? Solution: The ratio of a product is calculated as the total sales price in a particular year divide by the total sales price across all years. Oracle provides RATIO_TO_REPORT analytical function for finding the ratios. The SQL query is

SELECT P.PRODUCT_NAME, S.YEAR, RATIO_TO_REPORT(S.QUANTITY*S.PRICE) OVER(PARTITION BY P.PRODUCT_NAME ) SALES_RATIO FROM PRODUCTS P, SALES S WHERE (P.PRODUCT_ID = S.PRODUCT_ID);

PRODUCT_NAME YEAR

RATIO

----------------------------IPhone IPhone IPhone Nokia Nokia 2011 2012 2010 2012 2011 0.333333333 0.444444444 0.222222222 0.163265306 0.326530612

Nokia Samsung Samsung Samsung

2010 2010 2012 2011

0.510204082 0.344827586 0.344827586 0.310344828

4. In the SALES table quantity of each product is stored in rows for every year. Now write a query to transpose the quantity for each product and display it in columns? The output should look like as

PRODUCT_NAME QUAN_2010 QUAN_2011 QUAN_2012 -----------------------------------------IPhone Samsung Nokia 10 20 25 15 18 16 20 20 8

Solution: Oracle 11g provides a pivot function to transpose the row data into column data. The SQL query for this is

SELECT * FROM ( SELECT P.PRODUCT_NAME, S.QUANTITY, S.YEAR FROM PRODUCTS P, SALES S WHERE (P.PRODUCT_ID = S.PRODUCT_ID)

)A PIVOT ( MAX(QUANTITY) AS QUAN FOR (YEAR) IN (2010,2011,2012));

If you are not running oracle 11g database, then use the below query for transposing the row data into column data.

SELECT P.PRODUCT_NAME, MAX(DECODE(S.YEAR,2010, S.QUANTITY)) QUAN_2010, MAX(DECODE(S.YEAR,2011, S.QUANTITY)) QUAN_2011, MAX(DECODE(S.YEAR,2012, S.QUANTITY)) QUAN_2012 FROM PRODUCTS P, SALES S WHERE (P.PRODUCT_ID = S.PRODUCT_ID) GROUP BY P.PRODUCT_NAME;

5. Write a query to find the number of products sold in each year? Solution: To get this result we have to group by on year and the find the count. The SQL query for this question is

SELECT YEAR, COUNT(1) NUM_PRODUCTS FROM SALES

GROUP BY YEAR;

YEAR

NUM_PRODUCTS

-----------------2010 2011 2012 3 3 3

SQL Queries Interview Questions - Oracle Part 3

Here I am providing Oracle SQL Query Interview Questions. If you find any bugs in the queries, Please do comment. So, that i will rectify them. 1. Write a query to generate sequence numbers from 1 to the specified number N? Solution:

SELECT LEVEL FROM DUAL CONNECT BY LEVEL<=&N;

2. Write a query to display only friday dates from Jan, 2000 to till now? Solution:

SELECT

C_DATE, TO_CHAR(C_DATE,'DY')

FROM ( SELECT TO_DATE('01-JAN-2000','DD-MON-YYYY')+LEVEL-1 C_DATE FROM DUAL

CONNECT BY LEVEL <= (SYSDATE - TO_DATE('01-JAN-2000','DD-MON-YYYY')+1) ) WHERE TO_CHAR(C_DATE,'DY') = 'FRI';

3. Write a query to duplicate each row based on the value in the repeat column? The input table data looks like as below

Products, Repeat ---------------A, B, C, 3 5 2

Now in the output data, the product A should be repeated 3 times, B should be repeated 5 times and C should be repeated 2 times. The output will look like as below

Products, Repeat ---------------A, A, A, B, B, B, B, B, C, C, 3 3 3 5 5 5 5 5 2 2

Solution:

SELECT PRODUCTS, REPEAT FROM T, ( SELECT LEVEL L FROM DUAL CONNECT BY LEVEL <= (SELECT MAX(REPEAT) FROM T) ) A WHERE T.REPEAT >= A.L ORDER BY T.PRODUCTS;

4. Write a query to display each letter of the word "SMILE" in a separate row?

S M I L E

Solution:

SELECT SUBSTR('SMILE',LEVEL,1) A FROM DUAL

CONNECT BY LEVEL <=LENGTH('SMILE');

5. Convert the string "SMILE" to Ascii values? The output should look like as 83,77,73,76,69. Where 83 is the ascii value of S and so on. The ASCII function will give ascii value for only one character. If you pass a string to the ascii function, it will give the ascii value of first letter in the string. Here i am providing two solutions to get the ascii values of string. Solution1:

SELECT SUBSTR(DUMP('SMILE'),15) FROM DUAL;

Solution2:

SELECT WM_CONCAT(A) FROM ( SELECT ASCII(SUBSTR('SMILE',LEVEL,1)) A FROM DUAL

CONNECT BY LEVEL <=LENGTH('SMILE') );

SQL Queries Interview Questions - Oracle Part 4

1. Consider the following friends table as the source

Name, Friend_Name ----------------sam, sam, ram vamsi

vamsi, ram vamsi, jhon ram, ram, vijay anand

Here ram and vamsi are friends of sam; ram and jhon are friends of vamsi and so on. Now write a query to find friends of friends of sam. For sam; ram,jhon,vijay and anand arefriends of friends. The output should look as

Name, Friend_of_Firend ---------------------sam, sam, sam, sam, ram jhon vijay anand

Solution:

SELECT

f1.name, f2.friend_name as friend_of_friend

FROM

friends f1, friends f2

WHERE

f1.name = 'sam'

AND

f1.friend_name = f2.name;

2. This is an extension to the problem 1. In the output, you can see ram is displayed asfriends of friends. This is because, ram is mutual friend of sam and vamsi. Now extend the above query to exclude mutual friends. The outuput should look as

Name, Friend_of_Friend ---------------------sam, sam, sam, jhon vijay anand

Solution:

SELECT

f1.name, f2.friend_name as friend_of_friend

FROM

friends f1, friends f2

WHERE AND AND

f1.name = 'sam' f1.friend_name = f2.name NOT EXISTS (SELECT 1 FROM friends f3 WHERE f3.name = f1.name

AND

f3.friend_name = f2.friend_name);

3. Write a query to get the top 5 products based on the quantity sold without using the row_number analytical function? The source data looks as

Products, quantity_sold, year ----------------------------A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, L, M, 200, 155, 455, 620, 135, 390, 999, 810, 910, 109, 260, 580, 2009 2009 2009 2009 2009 2009 2010 2010 2010 2010 2010 2010

Solution:

SELECT

products,

quantity_sold, year FROM ( SELECT products, quantity_sold, year, rownum r from t

ORDER BY quantity_sold DESC )A WHERE r <= 5;

4. This is an extension to the problem 3. Write a query to produce the same output using row_number analytical function? Solution:

SELECT

products, quantity_sold, year

FROM ( SELECT products,

quantity_sold, year, row_number() OVER( ORDER BY quantity_sold DESC) r from )A WHERE r <= 5; t

5. This is an extension to the problem 3. write a query to get the top 5 products in each year based on the quantity sold? Solution:

SELECT

products, quantity_sold, year

FROM ( SELECT products, quantity_sold, year, row_number() OVER( PARTITION BY year ORDER BY quantity_sold DESC) r

from )A

WHERE r <= 5;

SQL Query Interview Questions - Part 5

Write SQL queries for the below interview questions: 1. Load the below products table into the target table.
CREATE TABLE PRODUCTS ( PRODUCT_ID PRODUCT_NAME ); INTEGER, VARCHAR2(30)

INSERT INTO PRODUCTS VALUES ( 100, 'Nokia'); INSERT INTO PRODUCTS VALUES ( 200, 'IPhone'); INSERT INTO PRODUCTS VALUES ( 300, 'Samsung'); INSERT INTO PRODUCTS VALUES ( 400, 'LG'); INSERT INTO PRODUCTS VALUES ( 500, 'BlackBerry'); INSERT INTO PRODUCTS VALUES ( 600, 'Motorola'); COMMIT;

SELECT * FROM PRODUCTS;

PRODUCT_ID PRODUCT_NAME

----------------------100 200 300 400 500 600 Nokia IPhone Samsung LG BlackBerry Motorola

The requirements for loading the target table are:

Select only 2 products randomly. Do not select the products which are already loaded in the target table with in the last 30

days.

Target table should always contain the products loaded in 30 days. It should not contain the products which are loaded prior to 30 days. Solution: First we will create a target table. The target table will have an additional column INSERT_DATE to know when a product is loaded into the target table. The target table structure is
CREATE TABLE TGT_PRODUCTS ( PRODUCT_ID PRODUCT_NAME INSERT_DATE ); INTEGER, VARCHAR2(30), DATE

The next step is to pick 5 products randomly and then load into target table. While selecting check whether the products are there in the

INSERT INTO TGT_PRODUCTS SELECT PRODUCT_ID, PRODUCT_NAME, SYSDATE INSERT_DATE FROM ( SELECT PRODUCT_ID,

PRODUCT_NAME FROM PRODUCTS S WHERE NOT EXISTS ( SELECT 1 FROM WHERE ) ORDER BY DBMS_RANDOM.VALUE --Random number generator in oracle. )A WHERE ROWNUM <= 2; TGT_PRODUCTS T T.PRODUCT_ID = S.PRODUCT_ID

The last step is to delete the products from the table which are loaded 30 days back.
DELETE FROM TGT_PRODUCTS WHERE INSERT_DATE < SYSDATE - 30;

2. Load the below CONTENTS table into the target table.

CREATE TABLE CONTENTS ( CONTENT_ID INTEGER,

CONTENT_TYPE VARCHAR2(30) );

INSERT INTO CONTENTS VALUES (1,'MOVIE'); INSERT INTO CONTENTS VALUES (2,'MOVIE'); INSERT INTO CONTENTS VALUES (3,'AUDIO'); INSERT INTO CONTENTS VALUES (4,'AUDIO'); INSERT INTO CONTENTS VALUES (5,'MAGAZINE'); INSERT INTO CONTENTS VALUES (6,'MAGAZINE'); COMMIT;

SELECT * FROM CONTENTS;

CONTENT_ID CONTENT_TYPE ----------------------1 2 3 4 5 6 MOVIE MOVIE AUDIO AUDIO MAGAZINE MAGAZINE

The requirements to load the target table are:

Load only one content type at a time into the target table. The target table should always contain only one contain type. The loading of content types should follow round-robin style. First MOVIE, second AUDIO, Third MAGAZINE and again fourth Movie. Solution: First we will create a lookup table where we mention the priorities for the content types. The lookup table Create Statement and data is shown below.
CREATE TABLE CONTENTS_LKP ( CONTENT_TYPE VARCHAR2(30), PRIORITY LOAD_FLAG ); INTEGER, INTEGER

INSERT INTO CONTENTS_LKP VALUES('MOVIE',1,1); INSERT INTO CONTENTS_LKP VALUES('AUDIO',2,0); INSERT INTO CONTENTS_LKP VALUES('MAGAZINE',3,0); COMMIT;

SELECT * FROM CONTENTS_LKP;

CONTENT_TYPE PRIORITY LOAD_FLAG --------------------------------MOVIE 1 1

AUDIO MAGAZINE

2 3

0 0

Here if LOAD_FLAG is 1, then it indicates which content type needs to be loaded into the target table. Only one content type will have LOAD_FLAG as 1. The other content types will have LOAD_FLAG as 0. The target table structure is same as the source table structure. The second step is to truncate the target table before loading the data
TRUNCATE TABLE TGT_CONTENTS;

The third step is to choose the appropriate content type from the lookup table to load the source data into the target table.
INSERT INTO TGT_CONTENTS SELECT CONTENT_ID,

CONTENT_TYPE FROM CONTENTS WHERE CONTENT_TYPE = (SELECT CONTENT_TYPE FROM CONTENTS_LKP WHERE LOAD_FLAG=1);

The last step is to update the LOAD_FLAG of the Lookup table.

UPDATE CONTENTS_LKP SET LOAD_FLAG = 0 WHERE LOAD_FLAG = 1;

UPDATE CONTENTS_LKP SET LOAD_FLAG = 1

WHERE PRIORITY = ( SELECT DECODE( PRIORITY,(SELECT MAX(PRIORITY) FROM CONTENTS_LKP) ,1 , PRIORITY+1) FROM WHERE ); CONTENTS_LKP CONTENT_TYPE = (SELECT DISTINCT CONTENT_TYPE FROM TGT_CONTENTS)