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-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. 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 nonclustered 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 called alternate 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?

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 TABLE can be rolled back.
DELETE TABLE

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?

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 about RAID levels and for detailed information, check out the RAID advisory board's homepage
RAID

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_PRIORITY and "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 DATABASE syntax. 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 CHECKDB, CHECKTABLE, CHECKCATALOG, CHECKALLOC, SHOWCONTIG, SHRINKDATABASE, SHRINKFILE etc.

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 STATISTICS, STATS_DATE, DBCC SHOW_STATISTICS, CREATE STATISTICS, DROP STATISTICS, sp_autostats, sp_createstats, sp_updatestats

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 and attaching databases, Replication, DTS, BCP, logshipping, INSERT...SELECT, SELECT...INTO, creating INSERT scripts to generate data.

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:

* Snapshot replication * Transactional replication (with immediate updating subscribers, with queued updating 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 @@Version stores 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, 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 between 30000 and 40000 -- 5000 hike Salary between 40000 and 55000 -- 7000 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 tbl_emp SET salary = CASE WHEN salary BETWEEN 30000 AND 40000 THEN salary + 5000 WHEN salary BETWEEN 40000 AND 55000 THEN salary + 7000 WHEN salary BETWEEN 55000 AND 65000 THEN salary + 10000 END

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 select_list [INTO new_table_] FROM table_source [WHERE search_condition] [GROUP BY group_by__expression] [HAVING search_condition] [ORDER BY order__expression [ASC | DESC] ]

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 JOINs, OUTER JOINs, CROSS JOINs

OUTER JOINs

are further classified as

LEFT OUTER JOINS, RIGHT OUTER JOINS FULL OUTER 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 TRAN and @@TRANCOUNT

What is an extended stored procedure? Can you instantiate a COM object by using TSQL?

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 for sp_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.

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What is a self join? Explain it with an example.

Self join is just like any other join, except that two instances of the same table will be joined in the query. Here is an example: Employees table which contains rows for normal employees as well as managers. So, to find out the managers of all the employees, you need a self join.

CREATE TABLE emp ( empid int, mgrid int, empname char(10) )

INSERT INSERT INSERT INSERT INSERT

emp emp emp emp emp

SELECT SELECT SELECT SELECT SELECT

1,2,'Vyas' 2,3,'Mohan' 3,NULL,'Shobha' 4,2,'Shridhar' 5,2,'Sourabh'

SELECT t1.empname [Employee], t2.empname [Manager] FROM emp t1, emp t2 WHERE t1.mgrid = t2.empid

Here is an advanced query using a LEFT OUTER JOIN that even returns the employees without managers (super bosses)

SELECT t1.empname [Employee], COALESCE(t2.empname, 'No manager') [Manager] FROM emp t1 LEFT OUTER JOIN emp t2 ON t1.mgrid = t2.empid

SQL interview questions and answers

By admin | July 14, 2008 1. What are two methods of retrieving SQL? 2. What cursor type do you use to retrieve multiple recordsets? 3. 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 command. 4. 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.
5. 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 ) 6. 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. 7. What is a "join"? - join used to connect two or more tables logically with or without common field. 8. 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 done by reduction in the number of joins needed for data processing. 9. 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.

SQL Interview Questions and Answers :

What is the difference between oracle,sql and sql server ?

Oracle is based on RDBMS. SQL is Structured Query Language. SQL Server is another tool for RDBMS provided by MicroSoft.

why you need indexing ? where that is stroed and what you mean by schema object? For what purpose we are using view? We cant create an Index on Index.. Index is stoed in user_index table.Every object that has been created on Schema is Schema Object like Table,View etc.If we want to share the particular data to various users we have to use the virtual table for the Base table...So tht is a view. indexing is used for faster search or to retrieve data faster from various table. Schema containing set of tables, basically schema means logical separation of the database. View is crated for faster retrieval of data. It's customized virtual table. we can create a single view of multiple tables. Only the drawback is..view needs to be get refreshed for retrieving updated data.

Difference between Store Procedure and Trigger?

we can call stored procedure explicitly. but trigger is automatically invoked when the action defined in trigger is done. ex: create trigger after Insert on this trigger invoked after we insert something on that table. Stored procedure can't be inactive but trigger can be Inactive. Triggers are used to initiate a particular activity after fulfilling certain condition.It need to define and can be enable and disable according to need.

What is the advantage to use trigger in your PL? Triggers are fired implicitly on the tables/views on which they are created. There are various advantages of using a trigger. Some of them are:

Suppose we need to validate a DML statement(insert/Update/Delete) that modifies a table then we can write a trigger on the table that gets fired implicitly whenever DML statement is executed on that table. Another reason of using triggers can be for automatic updation of one or more tables whenever a DML/DDL statement is executed for the table on which the trigger is created. Triggers can be used to enforce constraints. For eg : Any insert/update/ Delete statements should not be allowed on a particular table after office hours. For enforcing this constraint Triggers should be used. Triggers can be used to publish information about database events to subscribers. Database event can be a system event like Database startup or shutdown or it can be a user even like User loggin in or user logoff.

What the difference between UNION and UNIONALL? Union will remove the duplicate rows from the result set while Union all does'nt. What is the difference between TRUNCATE and DELETE commands? Both will result in deleting all the rows in the table .TRUNCATE call cannot be rolled back as it is a DDL command and all memory space for that table is released back to the server. TRUNCATE is much faster.Whereas DELETE call is an DML command and can be rolled back. Which system table contains information on constraints on all the tables created ? yes, USER_CONSTRAINTS, system table contains information on constraints on all the tables created Explain normalization ? Normalisation means refining the redundancy and maintain stablisation. there are four types of normalisation : first normal forms, second normal forms, third normal forms and fourth Normal forms. How to find out the database name from SQL*PLUS command prompt? Select * from global_name; This will give the datbase name which u r currently connected to..... What is the difference between SQL and SQL Server ?

SQLServer is an RDBMS just like oracle,DB2 from Microsoft whereas Structured Query Language (SQL), pronounced "sequel", is a language that provides an interface to relational database systems. It was developed by IBM in the 1970s for use in System R. SQL is a de facto standard, as well as an ISO and ANSI standard. SQL is used to perform various operations on RDBMS. What is diffrence between Co-related sub query and nested sub query? Correlated subquery runs once for each row selected by the outer query. It contains a reference to a value from the row selected by the outer query. Nested subquery runs only once for the entire nesting (outer) query. It does not contain any reference to the outer query row. For example, Correlated Subquery: select e1.empname, e1.basicsal, e1.deptno from emp e1 where e1.basicsal = (select max(basicsal) from emp e2 where e2.deptno = e1.deptno) Nested Subquery: select empname, basicsal, deptno from emp where (deptno, basicsal) in (select deptno, max(basicsal) from emp group by deptno) WHAT OPERATOR PERFORMS PATTERN MATCHING? Pattern matching operator is LIKE and it has to used with two attributes 1. % and 2. _ ( underscore ) % means matches zero or more characters and under score means mathing exactly one character 1)What is difference between Oracle and MS Access? 2) What are disadvantages in Oracle and MS Access? 3) What are feratures&advantages in Oracle and MS Access? Oracle's features for distributed transactions, materialized views and replication are not available with MS Access. These features enable Oracle to efficiently store data for multinational companies across the globe. Also these features increase scalability of applications based on Oracle. What is database? A database is a collection of data that is organized so that itscontents can easily be accessed, managed and updated. open this url : http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/d/database.html What is cluster.cluster index and non cluster index ? Clustered Index:- A Clustered index is a special type of index that reorders the way records in the table are physically stored. Therefore table may have only one clustered index.Non-Clustered Index:- 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 in the disk. The leaf nodes of a nonclustered index does not consists of the data pages. instead the leaf node contains index rows. How can i hide a particular table name of our schema? you can hide the table name by creating synonyms. e.g) you can create a synonym y for table x create synonym y for x; What is difference between DBMS and RDBMS? The main difference of DBMS & RDBMS is RDBMS have Normalization. Normalization means to refining the redundant and maintain the stablization. the DBMS hasn't normalization concept. What are the advantages and disadvantages of primary key and foreign key in SQL? Primary key Advantages 1) It is a unique key on which all the other candidate keys are functionally dependent Disadvantage 1) There can be more than one keys on which all the other attributes are dependent on. Foreign Key Advantage 1)It allows refrencing another table using the primary key for the other table Which date function is used to find the difference between two dates? datediff for Eg: select datediff (dd,'2-06-2007','7-06-2007') output is 5

Explain an outer join? An outer join includes rows from tables when there are no matching values in the tables.

What is a subselect? Is it different from a nested select? A subselect is a select which works in conjunction with another select. A nested select is a kind of subselect where the inner select passes to the where criteria for the outer select. What is the difference between group by and order by? Group by controls the presentation of the rows, order by controls the presentation of the columns for the results of the SELECT statement. What keyword does an SQL SELECT statement use for a string search? The LIKE keyword allows for string searches. The % sign is used as a wildcard.

What are some SQL aggregates and other built-in functions? The common aggregate, built-in functions are AVG, SUM, MIN, MAX, COUNT and DISTINCT. 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. E.g. SUBSTR (NAME, 1 3) refers to the first three characters in the column NAME.

Explain the EXPLAIN statement? The explain statement provides information about the optimizer's choice of access path of the SQL. What is referential integrity? Referential integrity refers to the consistency that must be maintained between primary and foreign keys, i.e. every foreign key value must have a corresponding primary key value. What is a NULL value? What are the pros and cons of using NULLS? A NULL value takes up one byte of storage and indicates that a value is not present as opposed to a space or zero value. It's the DB2 equivalent of TBD on an organizational chart and often correctly portrays a business situation. Unfortunately, it requires extra coding for an application program to handle this situation. What is a synonym? How is it used? A synonym is used to reference a table or view by another name. The other name can then be written in the application code pointing to test tables in the development stage and to

production entities when the code is migrated. The synonym is linked to the AUTHID that created it. What is an alias and how does it differ from a synonym?

An alias is an alternative to a synonym, designed for a distributed environment to avoid having to use the location qualifier of a table or view. The alias is not dropped when the table is dropped. When can an insert of a new primary key value threaten referential integrity? Never. New primary key values are not a problem. However, the values of foreign key inserts must have corresponding primary key values in their related tables. And updates of primary key values may require changes in foreign key values to maintain referential integrity. What is the difference between static and dynamic SQL? Static SQL is hard-coded in a program when the programmer knows the statements to be executed. For dynamic SQL the program must dynamically allocate memory to receive the query results. Compare a subselect to a join? Any subselect can be rewritten as a join, but not vice versa. Joins are usually more efficient as join rows can be returned immediately, subselects require a temporary work area for inner selects results while processing the outer select. What is the difference between IN subselects and EXISTS subselect? If there is an index on the attributes tested an IN is more efficient since DB2 uses the index for the IN. (IN for index is the mnemonic). What is a Cartesian product? A Cartesian product results from a faulty query. It is a row in the results for every combination in the join tables. What is a tuple? A tuple is an instance of data within a relational database. What is the difference between static and dynamic SQL?

Static SQL is compiled and optimized prior to its execution; dynamic is compiled and optimized during execution.

Any SQL implementation covers data types in couple of main categories. Which of the following are those data types ? (Check all that apply)

A). NUMERIC

B). CHARACTER

C). DATE AND TIME

D). BLOBS

E. BIT

A,B,C. Not all SQL implementations have a BLOB or a BIT data types.

We have a table with a CHARACTER data type field. We apply a ">" row comparison between this field and

another CHARACTER field in another table. What will be the results for records with field value of NULL?

(Check one that applies the best)

TRUE

B. FALSE

C. UNKNOWN

D. Error.

E. Those records will be ignored

C. NULL in a row when compared will give an UNKNOWN result.

Any database needs to go through a normalization process to make sure that data is represented only once. This

will eliminate problems with creating or destroying data in the database. The normalization process is done

usually in three steps which results in first, second and third normal forms. Which best describes the process to

obtain the third normal form? (Check one that applies the best)

Each table should have related columns.

Each separate table should have a primary key.

We have a table with multi-valued key. All columns that are dependent on only one or on some of the keys should be moved in a different table. If a table has columns not dependent on the primary keys, they need to be moved in a separate table.

E. Primary key is always UNIQUE and NOT NULL.

D. All columns in a table should be dependent on the primary key. This will eliminate transitive dependencies in

which A depends on B, and B depends on C, but we're not sure how C depends on A.

SQL can be embedded in a host program that uses a relational database as a persistent data repository. Some of

the most important pre-defined structures for this mechanism are SQLDA ("SQL Descriptor Area") and

SQLCA ("SQL Communications Area") SQLCA contains two structures SQLCODE and SQLSTATE.

SQLSTATE is a standard set of error messages and warnings in which the first two characters defines the class

and the last three defines the subclass of the error. Which of the following SQLSTATE codes is interpreted as

"No data returned"?(Check one that applies the best)

A). 00xxx

B). 01xxx

C). 02xxx

D). 22xxx

E). 2Axxx

C. 00 - is successful completion, 01 - warnings, 22 - is data exception and 2A is syntax error. The SQLSTATE code

format returned for "No data returned" is "02xxx".

What are common SQL abend codes? (e.g. : 0,100 etc.,)

-818 time stamp mismatch -180 wrong data moved into date field What is meant by dynamic SQL? Dynamic SQL are SQL statements that are prepared and executed within a program while the program is executing. The SQL source is contained in host variables rather than being hard coded into the program. The SQL statement may change from execution to execution. What is meant by embedded SQL? They are SQL statements that are embedded with in application program and are prepared during the program preparation process before the program is executed. After it is prepared, the statement itself does not change(although values of host variables specified within the statement might change).