sql server interview questions and answers for experienced

What is the purpose of using SET ANSI NULLS ON? The purpose of using SET ANSI_NULLS ON to follow the ISO Standard. Acording to this = and <> should not be used for null comparison. Instead we use null and is not null how ever if you will use = null it will return zero rows. If we want to use = or <> for null comparison use SET ANSI_NULLS OFF it means do not follow ISO Standard. SET ANSI_NULLS should be set to ON for executing distributed queries for maintaining compatibility of queries across Servers. Difference between cluster and non cluster index in sql? A clustered index is a special type of index that reorders the way records in the table are physically stored. Therefore table can have only one clustered index. The leaf nodes of a clustered index contain the data pages. A non clustered index is a special type of index in which the logical order of the index does not match the physical stored order of the rows on disk. The leaf node of a non clustered index does not consist of the data pages. Instead, the leaf nodes contain index rows. Can we create non primary key as cluster index? Yes we can do this on non-primary key column but that column must be unique and the primary key column of that table must have non-clustered index because there is one cluster index in table. By default primary key column contains clustered index so its recommended to create such non-primary key clustered index column first and then should create primary key column so in such case the primary key on that column will be with nonclustered. But its highly recommended to create primary key column as a clustered indexed column. Can we call a Trigger in store procedure? A Trigger is also a special kind of Stored Procedure which will fire automatically on the happening of an event like before or after insert, update or delete. We cannot call a trigger explicitly from a Stored Procedure. Difference Between GETDATE and SYSDATETIME? When we use GETDATE the precision is till miliseconds and in case of SYSDATETIME the precision is till nanoseconds. Get top two records without Top keyword. [SQL] set rowcount 2 select Column1, Column2 from TableName

Difference between Set and Select. -Set is a ANSI standard for variable assignment. It assigns value to only one variable at a time. -Select is a Non-ANSI standard when assigning variables. It assigns multiple variable at a time. -When assigning from a query that returns more than one value, SET will fail with an error. -When assigning from a query that returns more than one value, SELECT will assign the last value returned by the query and hide the fact that the query returned more than one row. How to get number of Maximum connection can be establish to SQL? select @@MAX_Connections Why we use SET ROWCOUNT in Sql? This syntax is used in SQL Server to stop processing the query after the specified number of rows are returned. What are the Global Temporary Tables? We can create global temporary tables but these are not using much in sql an the name of these table start with two pound signs. For example, ##globaltbl is a global temporary table. As the name suggest these table is Global temporary tables and visible to all SQL Server connections. When we create any one of these all users can see it. What is a View in SQL? View is just a virtual table nothing else which is based or we can say develop with SQL SELECT query.So we can say that its a real database table (it has columns and rows just like a regular table),but one difference is that real tables store data, but views can''t. View data is generated dynamically when the view is referenced. And view can also references one or more existing database tables or other views. We can say that it is filter of database. Why Group BY and Order By clause are so expensive? Both Group By and Order By clause requires Temporary table to process the result of query so these are expensive. What is the use of SET NOCOUNT ON? When we use SELECT and DML statement in SQL. SQL server return a message which specify the number of rows effected by these statements. This information helps coder when they are debugging the code other wise this is not useful we can disable this by typing SET NOCOUNT ON. It is very helpful when we are doing on store procedure contains lots of statements, loops its also increase in performance and boost network traffic. What are the differences between SQL and PL/SQL?

We can get modify, Retrieve by single command or statement in SQL but PL/SQL process all SQL statements one at a time. With PL/SQL, an entire block of statement process in a single command line. SQL is structured query language, various queries are used to handle the database in a simplified manner. While PL/SQL is procedural language contains various types of variables, functions and procedures and other major diffrence is Sql as the name suggest it is just structured query language wheareas PLSQL is a combination of Programming language & SQL. What is a join? List different types of joins Joins are used in queries to explain how different tables are related. Joins also let you select data from a table depending upon data from another table. Types of joins: -INNER JOIN -OUTER JOIN (OUTER JOIN is further classified as LEFT OUTER JOINS, RIGHT OUTER JOINS and FULL OUTER JOINS) -CROSS JOINs What is a Cursor? Cursor is a database object used by applications to manipulate data in a set on a row-byrow basis, instead of the typical SQL commands that operate on all the rows in the set at one time. For example, you can use cursor to include a list of all user databases and make multiple operations against each database by passing each database name as a variable. Difference between stored procedure and user defined function 1>Procedure can return zero or n values whereas function can return one value which is mandatory. 2>Procedures can have input, output parameters for it whereas functions can have only input parameters. 3>Procedure allow select as well as DML statement in it whereas function allow only select statement in it. 4>Functions can be called from procedure whereas procedures cannot be called from function. 5>Exception can be handled by try-catch block in a procedure whereas try-catch block cannot be used in a function. 6>We can go for transaction management in procedure whereas we can''t go in function. 7>Procedures can not be utilized in a select statement whereas function can be embedded in a select statement.

Posted By: Hariharan

Posted Dt: 06-Mar2012 55

Total Points:

Below are few interview questions: What is Extent and Page? Extent is a basic unit of storage to provide space for tables. Every extent has number of data pages. As new records are inserted new data pages are allocated. There are eight data pages in an extent. So as soon as the eight pages are consumed it allocates new extent with data pages. While extent is basic unit storage from database point of view, page is a unit of allocation within extent. What are the types of JOIN used in SQL Server? -Inner join - Outer Join (Left outer join and right outer join) - Self Join - Cross Join Whats the difference between UNION and UNION ALL ? UNION SQL syntax is used to select information from two tables. But it selects only distinct records from both the table, while UNION ALL selects all records from both the tables. What is a cursor? It is used to handle a set of data. Using cursors, you can loop through all the rows and update data accordingly. What are the steps involved in creating a cursor? 1. Declare Cursor 2. Open Cursor 3. Fetch the data''s 4. Operation 5. Close and Deallocate How is the SUBSTR keyword used in SQL? SUBSTR is used for string manipulation with column name, first position and string length

used as arguments. What is a trigger? Write its syntax. A Trigger is also a special kind of Stored Procedure which will fire automatically on the happening of an event like before or after insert, update or delete. We cannot call a trigger explicitly from a Stored Procedure. [SQL] CREATE TRIGGER TriggerName ON TableName AFTER INSERT | UPDATE | DELETE AS Query to be executed... GO

Posted By: Hariharan

Posted Dt: 18-Mar2012

56

Total Points:

Hi All, I have given the interview for RBS, Chennai a week ago. They asked me a question in sql server. How to fetch the second highest salary from a table without using top, rowcount and rank keywords... Could anyone know how to write the query fro fetching the second highest salary without using top, rowcount and rank keywords? Thanks,

Posted By: Vaishnavi

Posted Dt: 18-Mar2012 43

Total Points:

Hi Karthik, Below are few sql server interview questions and answers. What are CODD rules? There are 12 rules that every DBMS should adhere in order to be true RDBMS. These rules were laid by E.F.CODD in 1969. 1. Information Rule 2. Guaranteed access rule 3. Systematic treatment of null values 4. Dynamic on-line catalog based on the relational model 5. Comprehensive data sub-language Rule 6. View updating Rule 7. High-level insert, update and delete 8. Physical data independence 9. Logical data independence 10.Integrity independence 11.Distribution independence 12.Non-subversion Rule How many types of relationship exists in Database designing? 1. One to One 2. One to Many 3. Many to Many What is a DDL, DML and DCL concept? DDL (Data definition language) defines your database structure. CREATE and ALTER are DDL statements as they affect the way your database structure is organized. DML (Data Manipulation Language) lets you do basic functionalities like INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE and MODIFY data in database. DCL (Data Control Language) controls you DML and DDL statements so that your data is protected and has consistency. COMITT and ROLLBACK are DCL control statements. DCL guarantees ACID fundamentals of a transaction.

Difference between DELETE and TRUNCATE. - DELETE table can be rolled back while TRUNCATE can not be. - DELETE TABLE syntax logs the deletes thus making the delete operations low. TRUNCATE table does not log any information but it logs information about deallocation of data page of the table. So TRUNCATE table is faster as compared to delete table. - DELETE table can have criteria while TRUNCATE can not. - TRUNCATE table can not have triggers. What is a Cursor? Cursor is a database object used by applications to manipulate data in a set on a row-byrow basis, instead of the typical SQL commands that operate on all the rows in the set at one time. Thanks, Priya

Posted By: Priya

Posted Dt: 24-Mar2012

16

Total Points:

Hi Vaishnavi, I have written a query to fetch the second highest salary from the table. Please find the query below and let me know if it is not working [SQL] select points from tablename as tbl where (select count(*) from tablename where salary>=tbl.salary)=2

Thanks, Hariharan T G

Posted By: Hariharan

Posted Dt: 27-Mar2012

11

Total Points:

Hi Hari,

Thanks for posting the query. It works fine. Thanks

Posted By: Vaishnavi

Posted Dt: 28-Mar2012

Total Points:

Hi All, Below are the few sql server interview questions. Difference between truncate and delete in sql server. DELETE TABLE syntax logs the deletes thus make the delete operation slow. TRUNCATE table does not log any information but it logs information about deallocation of data page of the table so TRUNCATE table is faster as compared to delete table.

 DELETE table can have criteria while TRUNCATE cannot. TRUNCATE table does not invoke trigger. TRUNCATE will reset any identity columns to the default seed value. You cannot TRUNCATE a table that has any foreign key constraints. You will have to remove the constraints, TRUNCATE the table, and re-apply the constraints. Difference between where and having clause SQL WHERE clause condition is tested against each and every row of data, while the SQL HAVING clause condition is tested against the groups and/or aggregates specified in the SQL GROUP BY clause and/or the SQL SELECT column list. HAVING specifies a search condition for a group or an aggregate function used in SELECT statement. A HAVING clause is like a WHERE clause, but applies only to groups as a whole, whereas the WHERE clause applies to individual rows. A query can contain both a WHERE clause and a HAVING clause. The WHERE clause is applied first to the individual rows in the tables . Only the rows that meet the conditions in the WHERE clause are grouped. The HAVING clause is then applied to the rows in the result set. Only the groups that meet the HAVING conditions appear in the query output. You can apply a HAVING clause only to columns that also appear in the GROUP BY clause or in an aggregate function. Difference between DBMS and RDBMS A DBMS has to be persistent, that is it should be accessible when the program created the data ceases to exist or even the application that created the data restarted. A DBMS also has to provide some uniform methods independent of a specific application for accessing the information that is stored. RDBMS is a Relational Data Base Management System Relational DBMS. This adds the additional condition that the system supports a tabular structure for the data, with enforced relationships between the tables. This excludes the databases that don''t support a tabular structure or don''t enforce relationships between tables. Many DBA''s think that RDBMS is a Client Server Database system but thats not the case with RDBMS. Thanks, Balaji T G

Posted By: Balaji

Posted Dt: 28-Mar2012

25

Total Points:

What is a index in sql server? An index is a physical structure containing pointers to the data. Indexes are created in an existing table to locate rows more quickly and efficiently. It is possible to create an index on one or more columns of a table, and each index is given a name. They are just used to speed up queries. Drawbacks of Index: - Any DML operation performed in the table will be slow since it has to update the index pointers.

Difference between subquery and corelated subquery? In a subquery first the the inner query will be executed then the outer query will be executed. In corelated subquery the inner query refers to the outer query.

What are Clustered & non Clustered Indexes In clustered index table are physically stored. Only one clustered index. The leaf nodes of a clustered index contain the data pages. A non clustered index logical order of the index does not match the physical stored order of the rows on disk. The leaf node of a non clustered index does not consist of the data pages. Instead, the leaf nodes contain index rows

What are the types of joins in SQL Server? INNER JOIN LEFT OUTER JOIN RIGHT OUTER JOIN FULL OUTER JOIN CROSS JOIN Difference between delete and truncate in sql server. The deletion of each row gets logged in the transaction log, which makes it slow deletes all the rows in a table, but it wont log the deletion of each row, instead it logs the deallocation of the data pages of the table, which makes it faster. Thanks,

What is normalization? Explain different levels of normalization? Check out the article Q100139 from Microsoft knowledge base and of course, there's much more information available in the net. It will be a good idea to get a hold of any RDBMS fundamentals text book, especially the one by C. J. Date. Most of the times, it will be okay if you can explain till third normal form. What is de-normalization and when would you go for it? As the name indicates, de-normalization is the reverse process of normalization. It is the controlled introduction of redundancy in to the database design. It helps improve the query performance as the number of joins could be reduced. How do you implement one-to-one, one-to-many and many-to-many relationships while designing tables? 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-toMany relationships are implemented using a junction table with the keys from both the tables forming the composite primary key of the junction table. It will be a good idea to read up a database designing fundamentals text book. What's the difference between a primary key and a unique key? 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 non-clustered index by default. Another major difference is that, primary key does not allow NULLs, but unique key allows one NULL only. What are user defined data types and when you should go for them? User defined data types let you extend the base SQL Server data types 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 data type called Flight_num_type of varchar(8) and use it across all your tables.

See sp_addtype, sp_droptype in books online. What is bit data type and what's the information that can be stored inside a bit column? Bit data type is used to store Boolean information like 1 or 0 (true or false). Until SQL Server 6.5 bit data type could hold either a 1 or 0 and there was no support for NULL. But from SQL Server 7.0 onwards, bit data type can represent a third state, which is NULL. Define candidate key, alternate key, composite key. A candidate key is one that can identify each row of a table uniquely. Generally a candidate key becomes the primary key of the table. If the table has more than one candidate key, one of them will become the primary key, and the rest are calledalternate keys. A key formed by combining at least two or more columns is called composite key. What are defaults? Is there a column to which a default cannot be bound? 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. See CREATE DEFAULT in books online. What is a transaction and what are ACID properties? 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. For more information and explanation of these properties, see SQL Server books online or any RDBMS fundamentals text book. Explain different isolation levels 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.

CREATE INDEX myIndex ON myTable (myColumn) What type of Index will get created after executing the above statement? Non-clustered index. Important thing to note: By default a clustered index gets created on the primary key, unless specified otherwise. What is the maximum size of a row? 8060 bytes. Do not be surprised with questions like 'What is the maximum number of columns per table'. Check out SQL Server books online for the page titled: "Maximum Capacity Specifications". Explain Active/Active and Active/Passive cluster configurations Hopefully you have experience setting up cluster servers. But if you do not, at least be familiar with the way clustering works and the two clustering configurations Active/Active and Active/Passive. SQL Server books online has enough information on this topic and there is a good white paper available on Microsoft site. Explain the architecture of SQL Server This is a very important question and you better be able to answer it if consider yourself a DBA. SQL Server books online is the best place to read about SQL Server architecture. Read up the chapter dedicated to SQL Server Architecture. What is Lock Escalation? 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. What's the difference between DELETE TABLE and TRUNCATE TABLE commands?

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 will not log the deletion of each row, instead it logs the de-allocation of the data pages of the table, which makes it faster. Of course, TRUNCATE TABLEcan be rolled back. Explain the storage models of OLAP Check out MOLAP, ROLAP and HOLAP in SQL Server books online for more information. What are the new features introduced in SQL Server 2000 (or the latest release of SQL Server at the time of your interview)? What changed between the previous version of SQL Server and the current version? This question is generally asked to see how current is your knowledge. Generally there is a section in the beginning of the books online titled "What's New", which has all such information. Of course, reading just that is not enough, you should have tried those things to better answer the questions. Also check out the section titled "Backward Compatibility" in books online which talks about the changes that have taken place in the new version. What are constraints? Explain different types of constraints. 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 For an explanation of these constraints see books online for the pages titled: "Constraints" and "CREATE TABLE", "ALTER TABLE" What 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? 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 create 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 time, 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. What is RAID and what are different types of RAID configurations? 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. MSDN has some information aboutRAID levels and for detailed information, check out the RAID advisory board's homepage What are the steps you will take to improve performance of a poor performing query? 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 that you could talk about 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 you 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.

Download the white paper on performance tuning SQL Server from Microsoft web site.

What are the steps you will take, if you are tasked with securing an SQL Server? Again this is another open ended question. Here are some things you could talk about: Preferring NT authentication, using server, database and application roles to control access to the data, securing the physical database files using NTFS permissions, using an unguessable SA password, restricting physical access to the SQL Server, renaming the Administrator account on the SQL Server computer, disabling the Guest account, enabling auditing, using multi-protocol encryption, setting up SSL, setting up firewalls, isolating SQL Server from the web server etc. Read the white paper on SQL Server security from Microsoft website. Also check out My SQL Server security best practices What is a deadlock and what is a live lock? How will you go about resolving deadlocks? 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. Check out SET DEADLOCK_PRIORITYand "Minimizing Deadlocks" in SQL Server books online. Also check out the article Q169960 from Microsoft knowledge base. What is blocking and how would you troubleshoot it? Blocking happens when one connection from an application holds a lock and a second connection requires a conflicting lock type. This forces the second connection to wait, blocked on the first. Read up the following topics in SQL Server books online: Understanding and avoiding blocking, Coding efficient transactions. Explain CREATE DATABASE syntax

Many of us are used to creating databases from the Enterprise Manager or by just issuing the command: CREATE DATABASE MyDB. But what if you have to create a database with two file groups, one on drive C and the other on drive D with log on drive E with an initial size of 600 MB and with a growth factor of 15%? That's why being a DBA you should be familiar with the CREATE DATABASEsyntax. Check out SQL Server books online for more information. How to restart SQL Server in single user mode? How to start SQL Server in minimal configuration mode? SQL Server can be started from command line, using the SQLSERVR.EXE. This EXE has some very important parameters with which a DBA should be familiar with. -m is used for starting SQL Server in single user mode and -f is used to start the SQL Server in minimal configuration mode. Check out SQL Server books online for more parameters and their explanations. As a part of your job, what are the DBCC commands that you commonly use for database maintenance? DBCC DBCC DBCC DBCC DBCC DBCC DBCC SHRINKFILE etc. CHECKDB, CHECKTABLE, CHECKCATALOG, CHECKALLOC, SHOWCONTIG, SHRINKDATABASE,

But there are a whole load of DBCC commands which are very useful for DBAs. Check out SQL Server books online for more information. What are statistics, under what circumstances they go out of date, how do you update them? 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 Look up SQL Server books online for the following commands: UPDATE STATS_DATE, DBCC CREATE DROP sp_autostats, sp_createstats, sp_updatestats SHOW_STATISTICS, STATISTICS, STATISTICS, STATISTICS,

What are the different ways of moving data/databases between servers and databases in SQL Server? 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, Detaching Replication, DTS, BCP, logshipping, INSERT...SELECT, SELECT...INTO, creating INSERT scripts to generate data. and attaching databases,

Explain different types of BACKUPs available in SQL Server? Given a particular scenario, how would you go about choosing a backup plan? Types of backups you can create in SQL Sever 7.0+ are Full database backup, differential database backup, transaction log backup, filegroup backup. Check out the BACKUP and RESTORE commands in SQL Server books online. Be prepared to write the commands in your interview. Books online also has information on detailed backup/restore architecture and when one should go for a particular kind of backup. What is database replication? What are the different types of replication you can set up in SQL Server? Replication is the process of copying/moving data between databases on the same or different servers. SQL Server supports the following types of replication scenarios: * subscribers) * Merge replication See SQL Server books online for in-depth coverage on replication. Be prepared to explain how different replication agents function, what are the main system tables used in replication etc. How to determine the service pack currently installed on SQL Server? The global variable @@Versionstores the build number of the sqlservr.exe, which is used to determine the service pack installed. To know more about this process visit SQL Server service packs and versions. What are cursors? Explain different types of cursors. What are the disadvantages of cursors? How can you avoid cursors? Cursors allow row-by-row processing of the resultsets. Types of cursors: Static, Dynamic, Snapshot replication

* Transactional replication (with immediate updating subscribers, with queued updating

Forward-only, Keyset-driven.

See books online for more information. Disadvantages of cursors: Each time you fetch a row from the cursor, it results in a network roundtrip, where as a normal SELECT query makes only one round trip, however large the resultset is. Cursors are also costly because they require more resources and temporary storage (results in more IO operations). Further, there are restrictions on the SELECT statements that can be used with some types of cursors. Most of the times, set based operations can be used instead of cursors. Here is an example: If you have to give a flat hike to your employees using the following criteria: Salary Salary between between 30000 40000 and and 40000 55000 --5000 7000 hike hike

Salary between 55000 and 65000 -- 9000 hike

In this situation many developers tend to use a cursor, determine each employee's salary and update his salary according to the above formula. But the same can be achieved by multiple update statements or can be combined in a single UPDATE statement as shown below: UPDATE CASE WHEN WHEN END WHEN salary salary tbl_emp salary BETWEEN 30000 AND AND BETWEEN BETWEEN 40000 55000 SET AND 40000 55000 65000 THEN THEN salary THEN salary salary salary + + + = 5000 7000 10000

Another situation in which developers tend to use cursors: You need to call a stored procedure when a column in a particular row meets certain condition. You don't have to use cursors for this. This can be achieved using WHILE loop, as long as there is a unique key to identify each row. Write down the general syntax for a SELECT statements covering all the options. Here's the basic syntax: (Also checkout SELECT in books online for advanced syntax).

SELECT [INTO FROM [WHERE [GROUP [HAVING [ORDER BY order__expression [ASC | DESC] ] BY

select_list new_table_] table_source search_condition] group_by__expression] search_condition]

What is a join and explain different types of joins? Joins are used in queries to explain how different tables are related. Joins also let you select data from a table depending upon data from another table. Types of joins: INNER OUTER CROSS JOINs JOINs, JOINs,

OUTER JOINs are further classified as LEFT RIGHT FULL OUTER JOINS. OUTER OUTER JOINS JOINS, and

For more information see pages from books online titled: "Join Fundamentals" and "Using Joins". Can you have a nested transaction? Yes, very much. Check out BEGIN TRAN, COMMIT, ROLLBACK, SAVE TRANand @@TRANCOUNT What is an extended stored procedure? Can you instantiate a COM object by using T-SQL? An extended stored procedure is a function within a DLL (written in a programming language like C, C++ using Open Data Services (ODS) API) that can be called from T-SQL, just the way we call normal stored procedures using the EXEC statement. See books online to learn how to create extended stored procedures and how to add them to SQL Server.

Yes, you can instantiate a COM (written in languages like VB, VC++) object from T-SQL by using sp_OACreate stored procedure. Also see books online forsp_OAMethod, sp_OAGetProperty, sp_OASetProperty,

sp_OADestroy. What is the system function to get the current user's user id? USER_ID(). Also check out other system functions like USER_NAME(), SYSTEM_USER, SESSION_USER, CURRENT_USER, USER, SUSER_SID(), HOST_NAME().

What are triggers? How many triggers you can have on a table? How to invoke a trigger on demand? Triggers are special kind of stored procedures that get executed automatically when an INSERT, UPDATE or DELETE operation takes place on a table. In SQL Server 6.5 you could define only 3 triggers per table, one for INSERT, one for UPDATE and one for DELETE. From SQL Server 7.0 onwards, this restriction is gone, and you could create multiple triggers per each action. But in 7.0 there's no way to control the order in which the triggers fire. In SQL Server 2000 you could specify which trigger fires first or fires last using sp_settriggerorder Triggers cannot be invoked on demand. They get triggered only when an associated action (INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE) happens on the table on which they are defined. Triggers are generally used to implement business rules, auditing. Triggers can also be used to extend the referential integrity checks, but wherever possible, use constraints for this purpose, instead of triggers, as constraints are much faster.

Till SQL Server 7.0, triggers fire only after the data modification operation happens. So in a way, they are called post triggers. But in SQL Server 2000 you could create pre triggers also. Search SQL Server 2000 books online for INSTEAD OF triggers. Also check out books online for 'inserted table', 'deleted table' and COLUMNS_UPDATED() There is a trigger defined for INSERT operations on a table, in an OLTP system. The trigger is written to instantiate a COM object and pass the newly inserted rows to it for some custom processing. What do you think of this implementation? Can this be implemented better? Instantiating COM objects is a time consuming process and since you are doing it from within a trigger, it slows down the data insertion process. Same is the case with sending emails from triggers. This scenario can be better implemented by logging all the necessary data into a separate table, and have a job which periodically checks this table and does the needful.

SQL interview questions and answers

By admin | July 14, 2008

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What are two methods of retrieving SQL? What cursor type do you use to retrieve multiple recordsets? What is the difference between a "where" clause and a "having" clause? - "Where" is a kind of restiriction statement. You use where clause to restrict all the data from DB.Where clause is using before result retrieving. But Having clause is using after retrieving the data.Having clause is a kind of filtering

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command. What is the basic form of a SQL statement to read data out of a table? The basic form to read data out of table is SELECT * FROM table_name; An answer: SELECT * FROM table_name WHERE xyz= whatever; cannot be called basic form because of WHERE clause.

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What structure can you implement for the database to speed up table reads? - Follow the rules of DB tuning we have to: 1] properly use indexes ( different types of indexes) 2] properly locate different DB objects across different tablespaces, files and so on.3] create a special space (tablespace) to locate some of the data with special datatype ( for example CLOB, LOB and )

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What are the tradeoffs with having indexes? - 1. Faster selects, slower updates. 2. Extra storage space to store indexes. Updates are slower because in addition to updating the table you have to update the index. What is a "join"? - join used to connect two or more tables logically with or without common field. What is "normalization"? "Denormalization"? Why do you sometimes want to denormalize? Normalizing data means eliminating redundant information from a table and organizing the data so that future changes to the table are easier. Denormalization means allowing redundancy in a table. The main benefit of denormalization is improved performance with simplified data retrieval and manipulation. This is

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done by reduction in the number of joins needed for data processing. What is a "constraint"? - A constraint allows you to apply simple referential integrity checks to a table. There are four primary types of constraints that are currently supported by SQL Server: PRIMARY/UNIQUE - enforces uniqueness of a particular table column. DEFAULT - specifies a default value for a column in case an insert operation does not provide one. FOREIGN KEY - validates that every value in a column exists in a column of another table. CHECK - checks that every value stored in a column is in some specified list. Each type of constraint performs a specific type of action. Default is not a constraint. NOT NULL is one more constraint which does not allow values in the specific column to be null. And also it the only constraint which

is not a table level constraint. 10. What types of index data structures can you have? - An index helps to faster search values in tables. The three most commonly used index-types are: - B-Tree: builds a tree of possible values with a list of row IDs that have the leaf value. Needs a lot of space and is the default index type for most databases. - Bitmap: string of bits for each possible value of the column. Each bit string has one bit for each row. Needs only few space and is very fast.(however, domain of value cannot be large, e.g. SEX(m,f); degree(BS,MS,PHD) - Hash: A hashing algorithm is used to assign a set of characters to represent a text string such as a composite of keys or partial keys, and compresses the underlying data. Takes longer to build and is supported by relatively few databases. 11. What is a "primary key"? - A PRIMARY INDEX or PRIMARY KEY is something which comes mainly from database theory. From its behavior is almost the same as an UNIQUE INDEX, i.e. there may only be one of each value in this column. If you call such an INDEX PRIMARY instead of UNIQUE, you say something about your table design, which I am not able to explain in few words. Primary Key is a type of a constraint enforcing uniqueness and data integrity for each row of a table. All columns participating in a primary key constraint must possess the NOT NULL property. 12. What is a "functional dependency"? How does it relate to database table design? - Functional dependency relates to how one object depends upon the other in the database. for example, procedure/function sp2 may be called by procedure sp1. Then we say that sp1 has functional dependency on sp2. 13. What is a "trigger"? - Triggers are stored procedures created in order to enforce integrity rules in a database. A trigger is executed every time a data-modification operation occurs (i.e., insert, update or delete). Triggers are executed automatically on occurance of one of the data-modification operations. A trigger is a database object directly associated with a particular table. It fires whenever a specific statement/type of statement is issued against that table. The types of statements are insert,update,delete and query statements. Basically, trigger is a set of SQL statements A trigger is a solution to the restrictions of a constraint. For instance: 1.A database column cannot carry PSEUDO columns as criteria where a trigger can. 2. A database constraint cannot refer old and new values for a row where a trigger can. 14. Why can a "group by" or "order by" clause be expensive to process? - Processing of "group by" or "order by" clause often requires creation of Temporary tables to process the results of the query. Which depending of the result set can be very expensive.

15. What is "index covering" of a query? - Index covering means that "Data can be found only using indexes, without touching the tables" 16. What types of join algorithms can you have? 17. What is a SQL view? - An output of a query can be stored as a view. View acts like small table which meets our criterion. View is a precomplied SQL query which is used to select data from one or more tables. A view is like a table but it doesnt physically take any space. View is a good way to present data in a particular format if you use that query quite often. View can also be used to restrict users from accessing the tables directly.