Section 1: General Questions (Data Analysis)

1. What are the most important skills of a Data Analyst?

a. Inquisitive

b. Curiosity

c. Understanding behind numbers and analysis

d. Strategic approach to work and ability to map employers' objectives.

e. Effective communication and interpersonal skills

f. Problem-solving skills

g. Mathematical ability

h. Methodical and Logical approach to work

i. Thrive under pressure. Ability to meet deadlines

j. Ability to analyze and interpret the information accurately.

2. What financial statements will an analyst need to evaluate a company's performance?

a. Gross Profit Margin

b. Net profit Margin

c. Working capital

d. Current ratio

e. Quick ration

f. Leverage

g. Debt to equity ratio

h. Inventory turnover

i. Total asset turnover

j. Return on equity

k. Return on assets

l. Operating cash flow

3. if there are 5 people in a room and each chooses a number from 1 to 10 at random what is
the probability that two or more people have the same number
 a. First work out the probability that none have the same number: In this case,
imagine each person picks their random number in turn. From person one
through five, probabilities of picking unique numbers:

For person one: 10/10 (since no other numbers have been picked yet)

For person two: 9/10 (since one number has been picked by person one)

Person three: 8/10 (Assume that persons one and two have picked unique numbers
since we are looking for the prob. that ALL have picked unique numbers)

Person four: 7/10

Person 5: 6/10

Multiply together: get 30,240/100,000 = 30.24% Subtract from 100% to get 69.76%

4. What are some factors you will consider for defining KPIs for a project?

a. Focus on priorities

b. Relevant to the project

c. Compare impact of previous KPI’s

d. Include tracking KPI (to showcase movement)

e. Interviewing stakeholder, opinions.

5. What are the steps in a data analytics project?

a. Problem definition

b. Data Exploration

c. Data Preparation

d. Modelling

e. Data Validation

f. Implementation and tracking.

6. What is regression analysis?

a. Statistical method used in finance, investing and other disciplines that attempts
to determine the strength and character of the relationship between the X and Y
axis.

7. When is the best time to use cluster analysis?

a. When there is no assumption about relationships within the data. Gives

information about patterns in data and separating data into subsets. The
challenges include understanding what the data points mean, because the cluster
could not explain the data but just explain the spatial orientation.
 8. What is data mining and data profiling?

a. Data mining: Focuses on cluster analysis, detection of unusual records,

dependencies, sequence discovery, relation holding between several attributes,
etc.

b. Data Profiling: targets on instance analysis of individual attributes. It gives

information on various attributes like value range, discrete value and their
frequency, occurrence of null values, data type, length, etc.

9. What is an outlier?

a. Data points which is far from the normal range. There are 2 types:

i. Univariate

ii. Multivariate

10. What is collaborative filtering?

a. Algorithm to create a recommendation system based on user behavioural data.

The key components are users – items – interest.

MS EXCEL

1. How would you clear all formatting without removing the cell contents?

a. Clear format option

2. What is conditional formatting?

a. Allows to format a cell based on a pre-defined condition.

3. How can you make text invisible in Excel?

a. Font colour white

b. Custom format – Open format cell dialog box – Type ;;; in custom option field.

4. What is the order of operations used in Excel?

a. BODMAS or PEDMAS

5. What is a function and formula in Excel?

a. A formula is a user-defined expression that calculates a value. A function is pre-

defined built-in operation that can take the specified number of arguments. A user
can create formulas that can be complex and can have multiple functions in it.

b. For example, =A1+A2 is a formula and =SUM(A1:A10) is a function.

6. What does the look up functions perform in Excel?

 a. The function performs a rough match lookup either in a one-row or one-column
range and returns the corresponding value from another one-row or one-column
range.

b. Vlookup and Hlookup are most used functions in excel.

7. Limitations of vloopup and hlookup?

a. Vlookup needs the value to be looked up in the left most column.

b. Hlookup needs the value to be looked up in the top row of the dataset.

8. What are the options under the What-If analysis tab?

a. Scenario Manager

b. Goal Seek

c. Data table

9. What is relative cell address and cell referencing?

a. Whenever you copy formulas in Excel, the addresses of the reference cells get
modified automatically in order to match the position where the formula is copied.
This is done by a system that is called Relative Cell Addresses.

b. If you do not want Excel to change the addresses when you copy formulas, you
must make use of Absolute Cell Addresses. When you use Absolute Cell
References, the row and the column addresses do not get modified and remain
the same.

10. What are macros?

a. Excel allows you to automate the tasks you do regularly by recording them into
macros. So, a macro is an action or a set of them that you can perform n number
of times.

MySQL/SQL

1. What are the different subsets of SQL?

a. Data Definition Language (DDL) - It allows you to perform various operations on

the database such as CREATE, ALTER, and DELETE objects.

b. Data Manipulation Language(DML) - It allows you to access and manipulate

data. It helps you to insert, update, delete and retrieve data from the database.

c. Data Control Language(DCL) - It allows you to control access to the database.

Example - Grant, Revoke access permissions.
2. What is DBMS and types?

a. Database management system is a software application that interacts with the

user, applications, and the database itself to capture and analyse data. It is a
structured collection of data.

b. There are 2 types:

i. Relational Database Management systems

ii. Non-relational database management

system: No relations and attributes.

3. What are the different types of relationships in the database?

a. One to One: connection between the 2 tables.

b. One to Many and Many to One: Record in one table in connected to several
records in another. Most commonly used.

c. Many to Many: Used when defining a relationship that requires several instances
on each sides.

4. What are some common SQL statement examples?

a. Select

b. Insert

c. Update

d. Delete

e. Create database

f. Alter database

5. What are basic SQL skills?

a. Database Management

b. Structuring a database

c. Creating SQL clauses and statements

d. SQL system skills

e. Analyze SQL data

6. What is the syntax to remove duplicate rows in SQL?

a. DELETE FROM table WHERE ID IN( SELECT

ID, COUNT(ID)
 FROM table

GROUP BY ID

HAVING

COUNT (ID)>1;

7. How many aggregate functions in SQL?

a. There are 7 functions

i. AVG()

ii. COUNT()

iii. MAX()

iv. MIN()

v. SUM()

vi. FIRST()

vii. LAST()

8. Why do we use DISTINCT statement?

a. Used to remove duplicate records and return unique record.

b. Combined with SELECT query usually.

9. What is a sub-query in SQL?

a. A subquery is a query inside another query where a query is defined to retrieve

data or information back from the database. In a subquery, the outer query is
called as the main query whereas the inner query is called subquery.

10. What are the types of joins in SQL?

a. Inner

b. Left Outer

c. Right outer

d. Full outer

e. Cross

TABLEAU
1. Can we automate Tableau Reports? If yes, how?
 a. Yes, we can automate reports in Tableau. First, we have to
publish/release the Tableau report to the tableau server. At the time of
publishing, there will be an option to schedule reports. In that section, we
have to specify the time when we want to refresh the data
2. Which Tableau data types are preferable while dealing with structured data?
a. We can prefer using Text (string) values and numerical values as the two
popular data types while dealing with structured data in Tableau. Tableau
Desktop works best with structured data because the data remains
arranged in a tabular format (in rows and columns).
3. What are Measures in Tableau?
a. The data that we can measure or are quantifiable comes under
Measures. These are numerical metrics that remain stored in tables. They
have foreign keys that refer to their interconnected dimension tables
uniquely. For example, an employee table will have an employee ID,
customer key, projects delivered, etc., belonging to a specific project or
event.
4. What are Dimensions in Tableau? What will be the different dimensions of a web
app project?
a. We can represent the dimensions of the various characteristics, values,
and attributes descriptively for a particular project or product. The multiple
dimensions of a web app project will be its project name, project type,
budget, size, number of developers required, delivery date, etc.
5. What are the different platforms from where you can pull data to process
visualisation?
a. Tableau allows us to connect and pull data from a broad spectrum of
platforms. Tableau can extract data from simple data storage systems
such as MS. Excel or MS. Access and intricate database systems like
Oracle. It can also pull data from cloud services like Microsoft Azure SQL
database, Amazon Web services, or Google Cloud SQL.
6. How will you define the Tableau Dashboard?
a. Tableau dashboard is a combination of different data views. These data
views are various forms of visualisations that data analysts produce using
Tableau. If the BI analyst or the data analyst makes specific changes in
the data, it gets directly reflected in the dashboard.
7. What are the two different ways of sorting data in Tableau?
a. We can sort Tableau data using manual sorting and computed sorting. In
manual sorting, we drag the dimension field order and rearrange them in
an ad hoc fashion. In computed sorting, we apply the sort button on an
axis to sort the data.
8. Can you name the different joins available in Tableau?
a. Tableau joins are the same as that of SQL. These are:
i. Left join
 ii. Right join
iii. Inner join
iv. Full outer join
9. What is the highest number of tables can you join in Tableau?
a. We can join 32 tables in tableau. However, the size of a table in tableau
must be limited to 255 fields (columns).
10. What does Tableau's analytics pane give us?
a. The analytic pane in Tableau gives us the ability to access our everyday
analytics objects easily. It allows dragging trend lines, references, outliers,
forecasts, and other elements from the analytics pane.

POWER BI (Some of these questions may be relevant to Excel as well)

1. What is DAX?

a. Data Analysis Expressions

b. Calculated Column

c. Calculated Measure

d. We should understand what both of these are predicated on:

i. Calculated Columns are identical to the standard

sections seen in a large number of databases. What
important are that determined segments are the
result of our computations, which included the use of
at least two sections or segments from several
tables. They are useful for doing row-wise
computations.

ii. Calculated Measure, on the other hand, is

analogous to a deciding section. They do not,
however, involve any real memory, and their results
cannot be identified as a segment. This is often used
for doing dynamic computations on a collection of
lines or information.

2. What does Power BI’s slicer do?

a. Using the slicers, a user may quickly sort and filter through a large report to get
just the information they need. When examining a report, users may choose
characteristics while using slicers instead of filters since they are visible on the
report.

3. What does Grouping mean?

a. Grouping is a technique for combining or condensing at least two characteristics

for further study.
 4. What is Power Query?

a. Data connectivity and data preparation technology that enables end users to
seamlessly import and reshape data from within a wide range of Microsoft
products

5. What is power pivot?

a. Power Pivot is an in-memory data visualization component that enables

extremely dense data storage and lightning-fast gathering and processing.

6. What is the purpose of Get Data icon in PowerBI?

a. When users click on the Get Data icon in Power BI, a drop-down menu appears
and it shows all data sources from which data can be ingested. Data can actually
be directly ingested from any source including files in Excel, CSV, XML, JSON,
PDF, and SharePoint formats and databases such as SQL, Access, SQL Server
Analysis Services, Oracle, IBM, MySQL, and much more.

7. What are the applications of Power BI?

a. Project Management office

b. Business and data analysts

c. Database administrators

d. Consumer Reports

8. What are the advantages of Power BI?

a. ETL/Data recovery suite

b. Custom Visualization

c. Ease of use.

9. How are maps powered in Power BI?

a. Microsoft Bing.

b. Advantage over tableau – user does not need to provide latitude and longitude
coordinates.

10. What are the building blocks of Power BI?

a. Visualizations

b. Datasets

c. Reports

d. Dashboards

e. Tiles
 Section 2: SQL (Structured Query Language)

SQL Interview Questions

1. What is Database?

A database is an organized collection of data, stored and retrieved digitally from a

remote or local computer system. Databases can be vast and complex, and such
databases are developed using fixed design and modeling approaches.

2. What is DBMS?

DBMS stands for Database Management System. DBMS is a system software

responsible for the creation, retrieval, updation, and management of the database. It
ensures that our data is consistent, organized, and is easily accessible by serving as
an interface between the database and its end-users or application software.

3. What is RDBMS? How is it different from DBMS?

RDBMS stands for Relational Database Management System. The key difference
here, compared to DBMS, is that RDBMS stores data in the form of a collection of
tables, and relations can be defined between the common fields of these tables.
Most modern database management systems like MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server,
Oracle, IBM DB2, and Amazon Redshift are based on RDBMS.

4. What is SQL?

SQL stands for Structured Query Language. It is the standard language for relational
database management systems. It is especially useful in handling organized data
comprised of entities (variables) and relations between different entities of the data.

5. What is the difference between SQL and MySQL?

SQL is a standard language for retrieving and manipulating structured databases.

On the contrary, MySQL is a relational database management system, like SQL
Server, Oracle or IBM DB2, that is used to manage SQL databases.

6. What are Tables and Fields?

A table is an organized collection of data stored in the form of rows and columns.
Columns can be categorized as vertical and rows as horizontal. The columns in a
table are called fields while the rows can be referred to as records.

7. What are Constraints in SQL?

Constraints are used to specify the rules concerning data in the table. It can be
applied for single or multiple fields in an SQL table during the creation of the table or
after creating using the ALTER TABLE command. The constraints are:

● NOT NULL - Restricts NULL value from being inserted into a column.
● CHECK - Verifies that all values in a field satisfy a condition.
● DEFAULT - Automatically assigns a default value if no value has been
specified for the field.
● UNIQUE - Ensures unique values to be inserted into the field.
● INDEX - Indexes a field providing faster retrieval of records.
● PRIMARY KEY - Uniquely identifies each record in a table.
● FOREIGN KEY - Ensures referential integrity for a record in another table.

8. What is a Primary Key?

The PRIMARY KEY constraint uniquely identifies each row in a table. It must contain
UNIQUE values and has an implicit NOT NULL constraint.
A table in SQL is strictly restricted to have one and only one primary key, which is
comprised of single or multiple fields (columns).

CREATE TABLE Students ( /* Create table with a single field as primary key */

ID INT NOT NULL

Name VARCHAR(255)

PRIMARY KEY (ID)

);

CREATE TABLE Students ( /* Create table with multiple fields as primary key */

ID INT NOT NULL

LastName VARCHAR(255)

FirstName VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL,

CONSTRAINT PK_Student

PRIMARY KEY (ID, FirstName)

);
ALTER TABLE Students /* Set a column as primary key */

ADD PRIMARY KEY (ID);

ALTER TABLE Students /* Set multiple columns as primary key */

ADD CONSTRAINT PK_Student /*Naming a Primary Key*/

PRIMARY KEY (ID, FirstName);

write a sql statement to add primary key 't_id' to the table 'teachers'.

Write a SQL statement to add primary key constraint 'pk_a' for table 'table_a' and
fields 'col_b, col_c'.

9. What is a UNIQUE constraint?

A UNIQUE constraint ensures that all values in a column are different. This provides
uniqueness for the column(s) and helps identify each row uniquely. Unlike primary
key, there can be multiple unique constraints defined per table. The code syntax for
UNIQUE is quite similar to that of PRIMARY KEY and can be used interchangeably.

CREATE TABLE Students ( /* Create table with a single field as unique */

ID INT NOT NULL UNIQUE

Name VARCHAR(255)

);

CREATE TABLE Students ( /* Create table with multiple fields as unique */

ID INT NOT NULL

LastName VARCHAR(255)

FirstName VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL

CONSTRAINT PK_Student

UNIQUE (ID, FirstName)

);

ALTER TABLE Students /* Set a column as unique */

ADD UNIQUE (ID);

ALTER TABLE Students /* Set multiple columns as unique */

ADD CONSTRAINT PK_Student /* Naming a unique constraint */

UNIQUE (ID, FirstName);

10. What is a Foreign Key?

A FOREIGN KEY comprises of single or collection of fields in a table that essentially

refers to the PRIMARY KEY in another table. Foreign key constraint ensures
referential integrity in the relation between two tables.
The table with the foreign key constraint is labeled as the child table, and the table
containing the candidate key is labeled as the referenced or parent table.

CREATE TABLE Students ( /* Create table with foreign key - Way 1 */

ID INT NOT NULL

Name VARCHAR(255)

LibraryID INT

PRIMARY KEY (ID)

FOREIGN KEY (Library_ID) REFERENCES Library(LibraryID)

);

CREATE TABLE Students ( /* Create table with foreign key - Way 2 */

ID INT NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY

Name VARCHAR(255)

LibraryID INT FOREIGN KEY (Library_ID) REFERENCES Library(LibraryID)

);

ALTER TABLE Students /* Add a new foreign key */

ADD FOREIGN KEY (LibraryID)

REFERENCES Library (LibraryID);

What type of integrity constraint does the foreign key ensure?

Write a SQL statement to add a FOREIGN KEY 'col_fk' in 'table_y' that references
'col_pk' in 'table_x'.

11. What is a Join? List its different types.

The SQL Join clause is used to combine records (rows) from two or more tables in a
SQL database based on a related column between the two.

There are four different types of JOINs in SQL:

● (INNER) JOIN: Retrieves records that have matching values in both tables
involved in the join. This is the widely used join for queries.

SELECT *

FROM Table_A

JOIN Table_B;

SELECT *

FROM Table_A

INNER JOIN Table_B;

● LEFT (OUTER) JOIN: Retrieves all the records/rows from the left and the
matched records/rows from the right table.

SELECT *

FROM Table_A A

LEFT JOIN Table_B B

ON A.col = B.col;
● RIGHT (OUTER) JOIN: Retrieves all the records/rows from the right and the
matched records/rows from the left table.

SELECT *

FROM Table_A A

RIGHT JOIN Table_B B

ON A.col = B.col;
● FULL (OUTER) JOIN: Retrieves all the records where there is a match in
either the left or right table.
SELECT *

FROM Table_A A

FULL JOIN Table_B B

ON A.col = B.col;

12. What is a Self-Join?

A self JOIN is a case of regular join where a table is joined to itself based on some
relation between its own column(s). Self-join uses the INNER JOIN or LEFT JOIN
clause and a table alias is used to assign different names to the table within the
query.

SELECT A.emp_id AS "Emp_ID",A.emp_name AS "Employee",

B.emp_id AS "Sup_ID",B.emp_name AS "Supervisor"

FROM employee A, employee B

WHERE A.emp_sup = B.emp_id;

13. What is a Cross-Join?

Cross join can be defined as a cartesian product of the two tables included in the
join. The table after join contains the same number of rows as in the cross-product of
the number of rows in the two tables. If a WHERE clause is used in cross join then
the query will work like an INNER JOIN.

SELECT stu.name, sub.subject

FROM students AS stu

CROSS JOIN subjects AS sub;

Write a SQL statement to CROSS JOIN 'table_1' with 'table_2' and fetch 'col_1' from
table_1 & 'col_2' from table_2 respectively. Do not use alias.

Write a SQL statement to perform SELF JOIN for 'Table_X' with alias 'Table_1' and
'Table_2', on columns 'Col_1' and 'Col_2' respectively.

14. What is an Index? Explain its different types.

A database index is a data structure that provides a quick lookup of data in a column
or columns of a table. It enhances the speed of operations accessing data from a
database table at the cost of additional writes and memory to maintain the index data
structure.
CREATE INDEX index_name /* Create Index */

ON table_name (column_1, column_2);

DROP INDEX index_name; /* Drop Index */

There are different types of indexes that can be created for different purposes:

● Unique and Non-Unique Index:

Unique indexes are indexes that help maintain data integrity by ensuring that no two
rows of data in a table have identical key values. Once a unique index has been
defined for a table, uniqueness is enforced whenever keys are added or changed
within the index.

CREATE UNIQUE INDEX myIndex

ON students (enroll_no);

Non-unique indexes, on the other hand, are not used to enforce constraints on the
tables with which they are associated. Instead, non-unique indexes are used solely
to improve query performance by maintaining a sorted order of data values that are
used frequently.

● Clustered and Non-Clustered Index:

Clustered indexes are indexes whose order of the rows in the database corresponds
to the order of the rows in the index. This is why only one clustered index can exist in
a given table, whereas, multiple non-clustered indexes can exist in the table.

The only difference between clustered and non-clustered indexes is that the
database manager attempts to keep the data in the database in the same order as
the corresponding keys appear in the clustered index.

Clustering indexes can improve the performance of most query operations because
they provide a linear-access path to data stored in the database.

Write a SQL statement to create a UNIQUE INDEX "my_index" on "my_table" for

fields "column_1" & "column_2".

15. What is the difference between Clustered and Non-clustered index?

As explained above, the differences can be broken down into three small factors -

● Clustered index modifies the way records are stored in a database based on
the indexed column. A non-clustered index creates a separate entity within
the table which references the original table.
 ● Clustered index is used for easy and speedy retrieval of data from the
database, whereas, fetching records from the non-clustered index is relatively
slower.
● In SQL, a table can have a single clustered index whereas it can have
multiple non-clustered indexes.

16. What is Data Integrity?

Data Integrity is the assurance of accuracy and consistency of data over its entire
life-cycle and is a critical aspect of the design, implementation, and usage of any
system which stores, processes, or retrieves data. It also defines integrity constraints
to enforce business rules on the data when it is entered into an application or a
database.

17. What is a Query?

A query is a request for data or information from a database table or combination of

tables. A database query can be either a select query or an action query.

SELECT fname, lname /* select query */

FROM myDb.students

WHERE student_id = 1;

UPDATE myDB.students /* action query */

SET fname = 'Captain', lname = 'America'

WHERE student_id = 1;

18. What is a Subquery? What are its types?

A subquery is a query within another query, also known as a nested query or inner
query. It is used to restrict or enhance the data to be queried by the main query,
thus restricting or enhancing the output of the main query respectively. For example,
here we fetch the contact information for students who have enrolled for the maths
subject:

SELECT name, email, mob, address

FROM myDb.contacts

WHERE roll_no IN (

SELECT roll_no

FROM myDb.students
WHERE subject = 'Maths');

There are two types of subquery - Correlated and Non-Correlated.

● A correlated subquery cannot be considered as an independent query, but it

can refer to the column in a table listed in the FROM of the main query.
● A non-correlated subquery can be considered as an independent query and
the output of the subquery is substituted in the main query.

Write a SQL query to update the field "status" in table "applications" from 0 to 1.

Write a SQL query to select the field "app_id" in table "applications" where "app_id"
less than 1000.

Write a SQL query to fetch the field "app_name" from "apps" where "apps.id" is
equal to the above collection of "app_id".

19. What is the SELECT statement?

SELECT operator in SQL is used to select data from a database. The data returned
is stored in a result table, called the result-set.

SELECT * FROM myDB.students;

20. What are some common clauses used with SELECT query in SQL?

Some common SQL clauses used in conjuction with a SELECT query are as follows:

● WHERE clause in SQL is used to filter records that are necessary, based on
specific conditions.
● ORDER BY clause in SQL is used to sort the records based on some field(s)
in ascending (ASC) or descending order (DESC).

SELECT *

FROM myDB.students

WHERE graduation_year = 2019

ORDER BY studentID DESC;

● GROUP BY clause in SQL is used to group records with identical data and
can be used in conjunction with some aggregation functions to produce
summarized results from the database.
● HAVING clause in SQL is used to filter records in combination with the
GROUP BY clause. It is different from WHERE, since the WHERE clause
cannot filter aggregated records.

SELECT COUNT(studentId), country

FROM myDB.students

WHERE country != "INDIA"

GROUP BY country

HAVING COUNT(studentID) > 5;

21. What are UNION, MINUS and INTERSECT commands?

The UNION operator combines and returns the result-set retrieved by two or more
SELECT statements.
The MINUS operator in SQL is used to remove duplicates from the result-set
obtained by the second SELECT query from the result-set obtained by the first
SELECT query and then return the filtered results from the first.
The INTERSECT clause in SQL combines the result-set fetched by the two
SELECT statements where records from one match the other and then returns this
intersection of result-sets.

Certain conditions need to be met before executing either of the above statements in
SQL -

● Each SELECT statement within the clause must have the same number of
columns
● The columns must also have similar data types
● The columns in each SELECT statement should necessarily have the same
order

SELECT name FROM Students /* Fetch the union of queries */

UNION

SELECT name FROM Contacts;

SELECT name FROM Students /* Fetch the union of queries with duplicates*/

UNION ALL

SELECT name FROM Contacts;

SELECT name FROM Students /* Fetch names from students */

MINUS /* that aren't present in contacts */

SELECT name FROM Contacts;

SELECT name FROM Students /* Fetch names from students */

INTERSECT /* that are present in contacts as well */

SELECT name FROM Contacts;

Write a SQL query to fetch "names" that are present in either table "accounts" or in
table "registry".

Write a SQL query to fetch "names" that are present in "accounts" but not in table
"registry".

Write a SQL query to fetch "names" from table "contacts" that are neither present in
"accounts.name" nor in "registry.name".

22. What is Cursor? How to use a Cursor?

A database cursor is a control structure that allows for the traversal of records in a
database. Cursors, in addition, facilitates processing after traversal, such as
retrieval, addition, and deletion of database records. They can be viewed as a
pointer to one row in a set of rows.

Working with SQL Cursor:

1. DECLARE a cursor after any variable declaration. The cursor declaration

must always be associated with a SELECT Statement.
2. Open cursor to initialize the result set. The OPEN statement must be called
before fetching rows from the result set.
3. FETCH statement to retrieve and move to the next row in the result set.
4. Call the CLOSE statement to deactivate the cursor.
5. Finally use the DEALLOCATE statement to delete the cursor definition and
release the associated resources.

DECLARE @name VARCHAR(50) /* Declare All Required Variables */

DECLARE db_cursor CURSOR FOR /* Declare Cursor Name*/

SELECT name

FROM myDB.students

WHERE parent_name IN ('Sara', 'Ansh')

OPEN db_cursor /* Open cursor and Fetch data into @name */

FETCH next

FROM db_cursor

INTO @name
CLOSE db_cursor /* Close the cursor and deallocate the resources */

DEALLOCATE db_cursor

23. What are Entities and Relationships?

Entity: An entity can be a real-world object, either tangible or intangible, that can be
easily identifiable. For example, in a college database, students, professors,
workers, departments, and projects can be referred to as entities. Each entity has
some associated properties that provide it an identity.

Relationships: Relations or links between entities that have something to do with

each other. For example - The employee's table in a company's database can be
associated with the salary table in the same database.

24. List the different types of relationships in SQL.

● One-to-One - This can be defined as the relationship between two tables

where each record in one table is associated with the maximum of one record
in the other table.
● One-to-Many & Many-to-One - This is the most commonly used relationship
where a record in a table is associated with multiple records in the other table.
● Many-to-Many - This is used in cases when multiple instances on both sides
are needed for defining a relationship.
● Self-Referencing Relationships - This is used when a table needs to define
a relationship with itself.

25. What is an Alias in SQL?

An alias is a feature of SQL that is supported by most, if not all, RDBMSs. It is a

temporary name assigned to the table or table column for the purpose of a particular
SQL query. In addition, aliasing can be employed as an obfuscation technique to
secure the real names of database fields. A table alias is also called a correlation
name.

An alias is represented explicitly by the AS keyword but in some cases, the same
can be performed without it as well. Nevertheless, using the AS keyword is always a
good practice.

SELECT A.emp_name AS "Employee" /* Alias using AS keyword */

B.emp_name AS "Supervisor"

FROM employee A, employee B /* Alias without AS keyword */

WHERE A.emp_sup = B.emp_id;

Write an SQL statement to select all from table "Limited" with alias "Ltd".

26. What is a View?

A view in SQL is a virtual table based on the result-set of an SQL statement. A view
contains rows and columns, just like a real table. The fields in a view are fields from
one or more real tables in the database.

27. What is Normalization?

Normalization represents the way of organizing structured data in the database

efficiently. It includes the creation of tables, establishing relationships between them,
and defining rules for those relationships. Inconsistency and redundancy can be kept
in check based on these rules, hence, adding flexibility to the database.

28. What is Denormalization?

Denormalization is the inverse process of normalization, where the normalized

schema is converted into a schema that has redundant information. The
performance is improved by using redundancy and keeping the redundant data
consistent. The reason for performing denormalization is the overheads produced in
the query processor by an over-normalized structure.

29. What are the various forms of Normalization?

Normal Forms are used to eliminate or reduce redundancy in database tables. The
different forms are as follows:

● First Normal Form:

A relation is in first normal form if every attribute in that relation is a single-
valued attribute. If a relation contains a composite or multi-valued attribute, it
violates the first normal form. Let's consider the following students table.
Each student in the table, has a name, his/her address, and the books they
issued from the public library -

Students Table

Studen Address Books Issued Salutatio

t n

Amanora Park Until the Day I Die (Emily Carpenter),

Sara Town 94 Inception (Christopher Nolan) Ms.

The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho), Inferno (Dan

Ansh 62nd Sector A-10 Brown) Mr.
 24th Street Park Beautiful Bad (Annie Ward), Woman 99
Sara Avenue (Greer Macallister) Mrs.

Windsor Street
Ansh 777 Dracula (Bram Stoker) Mr.

As we can observe, the Books Issued field has more than one value per record, and
to convert it into 1NF, this has to be resolved into separate individual records for
each book issued. Check the following table in 1NF form -

Students Table (1st Normal Form)

Studen Address Books Issued Salutatio

t n

Amanora Park Town Until the Day I Die (Emily

Sara 94 Carpenter) Ms.

Amanora Park Town

Sara 94 Inception (Christopher Nolan) Ms.

Ansh 62nd Sector A-10 The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho) Mr.

Ansh 62nd Sector A-10 Inferno (Dan Brown) Mr.

24th Street Park

Sara Avenue Beautiful Bad (Annie Ward) Mrs.

24th Street Park

Sara Avenue Woman 99 (Greer Macallister) Mrs.

Ansh Windsor Street 777 Dracula (Bram Stoker) Mr.

● Second Normal Form:

A relation is in second normal form if it satisfies the conditions for the first normal
form and does not contain any partial dependency. A relation in 2NF has no partial
dependency, i.e., it has no non-prime attribute that depends on any proper subset of
any candidate key of the table. Often, specifying a single column Primary Key is the
solution to the problem. Examples -

Example 1 - Consider the above example. As we can observe, the Students Table in
the 1NF form has a candidate key in the form of [Student, Address] that can uniquely
identify all records in the table. The field Books Issued (non-prime attribute) depends
partially on the Student field. Hence, the table is not in 2NF. To convert it into the
2nd Normal Form, we will partition the tables into two while specifying a new
Primary Key attribute to identify the individual records in the Students table. The
Foreign Key constraint will be set on the other table to ensure referential integrity.

Students Table (2nd Normal Form)

Student_I Stude Address Salutatio

D nt n

Amanora Park Town

1 Sara 94 Ms.

2 Ansh 62nd Sector A-10 Mr.

24th Street Park

3 Sara Avenue Mrs.

4 Ansh Windsor Street 777 Mr.

Books Table (2nd Normal Form)

Student_I Book Issued

D

Until the Day I Die (Emily

1 Carpenter)

1 Inception (Christopher Nolan)

2 The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)

2 Inferno (Dan Brown)

3 Beautiful Bad (Annie Ward)

3 Woman 99 (Greer Macallister)

4 Dracula (Bram Stoker)

Example 2 - Consider the following dependencies in relation to R(W,X,Y,Z)

WX -> Y [W and X together determine Y]

XY -> Z [X and Y together determine Z]

Here, WX is the only candidate key and there is no partial dependency, i.e., any
proper subset of WX doesn’t determine any non-prime attribute in the relation.
 ● Third Normal Form

A relation is said to be in the third normal form, if it satisfies the conditions for the
second normal form and there is no transitive dependency between the non-prime
attributes, i.e., all non-prime attributes are determined only by the candidate keys of
the relation and not by any other non-prime attribute.

Example 1 - Consider the Students Table in the above example. As we can observe,
the Students Table in the 2NF form has a single candidate key Student_ID (primary
key) that can uniquely identify all records in the table. The field Salutation (non-prime
attribute), however, depends on the Student Field rather than the candidate key.
Hence, the table is not in 3NF. To convert it into the 3rd Normal Form, we will once
again partition the tables into two while specifying a new Foreign Key constraint to
identify the salutations for individual records in the Students table. The Primary Key
constraint for the same will be set on the Salutations table to identify each record
uniquely.

Students Table (3rd Normal Form)

Student_I Studen Address Salutation_I

D t D

Amanora Park Town

1 Sara 94 1

2 Ansh 62nd Sector A-10 2

24th Street Park

3 Sara Avenue 3

4 Ansh Windsor Street 777 1

Books Table (3rd Normal Form)

Student_I Book Issued

D

Until the Day I Die (Emily

1 Carpenter)

1 Inception (Christopher Nolan)

2 The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)

2 Inferno (Dan Brown)

3 Beautiful Bad (Annie Ward)

3 Woman 99 (Greer Macallister)

4 Dracula (Bram Stoker)

Salutations Table (3rd Normal Form)

Salutation_I Salutatio
D n

1 Ms.

2 Mr.

3 Mrs.

Example 2 - Consider the following dependencies in relation to R(P,Q,R,S,T)

P -> QR [P together determine C]

RS -> T [B and C together determine D]

Q -> S

T -> P

For the above relation to exist in 3NF, all possible candidate keys in the above
relation should be {P, RS, QR, T}.

● Boyce-Codd Normal Form

A relation is in Boyce-Codd Normal Form if satisfies the conditions for third normal
form and for every functional dependency, Left-Hand-Side is super key. In other
words, a relation in BCNF has non-trivial functional dependencies in form X –> Y,
such that X is always a super key. For example - In the above example, Student_ID
serves as the sole unique identifier for the Students Table and Salutation_ID for the
Salutations Table, thus these tables exist in BCNF. The same cannot be said for the
Books Table and there can be several books with common Book Names and the
same Student_ID.

30. What are the TRUNCATE, DELETE and DROP statements?

DELETE statement is used to delete rows from a table.

DELETE FROM Candidates

WHERE CandidateId > 1000;

TRUNCATE command is used to delete all the rows from the table and free the
space containing the table.

TRUNCATE TABLE Candidates;

DROP command is used to remove an object from the database. If you drop a table,
all the rows in the table are deleted and the table structure is removed from the
database.

DROP TABLE Candidates;

Write a SQL statement to wipe a table 'Temporary' from memory.

Write a SQL query to remove first 1000 records from table 'Temporary' based on 'id'.

Write a SQL statement to delete the table 'Temporary' while keeping its relations
intact.

31. What is the difference between DROP and TRUNCATE statements?

If a table is dropped, all things associated with the tables are dropped as well. This
includes - the relationships defined on the table with other tables, the integrity checks
and constraints, access privileges and other grants that the table has. To create and
use the table again in its original form, all these relations, checks, constraints,
privileges and relationships need to be redefined. However, if a table is truncated,
none of the above problems exist and the table retains its original structure.

32. What is the difference between DELETE and TRUNCATE statements?

The TRUNCATE command is used to delete all the rows from the table and free the
space containing the table.
The DELETE command deletes only the rows from the table based on the condition
given in the where clause or deletes all the rows from the table if no condition is
specified. But it does not free the space containing the table.

33. What are Aggregate and Scalar functions?

An aggregate function performs operations on a collection of values to return a

single scalar value. Aggregate functions are often used with the GROUP BY and
HAVING clauses of the SELECT statement. Following are the widely used SQL
aggregate functions:

● AVG() - Calculates the mean of a collection of values.

● COUNT() - Counts the total number of records in a specific table or view.
● MIN() - Calculates the minimum of a collection of values.
 ● MAX() - Calculates the maximum of a collection of values.
● SUM() - Calculates the sum of a collection of values.
● FIRST() - Fetches the first element in a collection of values.
● LAST() - Fetches the last element in a collection of values.

Note: All aggregate functions described above ignore NULL values except for the
COUNT function.

A scalar function returns a single value based on the input value. Following are the
widely used SQL scalar functions:

● LEN() - Calculates the total length of the given field (column).

● UCASE() - Converts a collection of string values to uppercase characters.
● LCASE() - Converts a collection of string values to lowercase characters.
● MID() - Extracts substrings from a collection of string values in a table.
● CONCAT() - Concatenates two or more strings.
● RAND() - Generates a random collection of numbers of a given length.
● ROUND() - Calculates the round-off integer value for a numeric field (or
decimal point values).
● NOW() - Returns the current date & time.
● FORMAT() - Sets the format to display a collection of values.

34. What is User-defined function? What are its various types?

The user-defined functions in SQL are like functions in any other programming
language that accept parameters, perform complex calculations, and return a value.
They are written to use the logic repetitively whenever required. There are two types
of SQL user-defined functions:

● Scalar Function: As explained earlier, user-defined scalar functions return a

single scalar value.
● Table-Valued Functions: User-defined table-valued functions return a table as
output.
○ Inline: returns a table data type based on a single SELECT statement.
○ Multi-statement: returns a tabular result-set but, unlike inline, multiple
SELECT statements can be used inside the function body.

35. What is OLTP?

OLTP stands for Online Transaction Processing, is a class of software applications

capable of supporting transaction-oriented programs. An essential attribute of an
OLTP system is its ability to maintain concurrency. To avoid single points of failure,
OLTP systems are often decentralized. These systems are usually designed for a
large number of users who conduct short transactions. Database queries are usually
simple, require sub-second response times, and return relatively few records. Here is
an insight into the working of an OLTP system [ Note - The figure is not important for
interviews ] -

36. What are the differences between OLTP and OLAP?

OLTP stands for Online Transaction Processing, is a class of software

applications capable of supporting transaction-oriented programs. An important
attribute of an OLTP system is its ability to maintain concurrency. OLTP systems
often follow a decentralized architecture to avoid single points of failure. These
systems are generally designed for a large audience of end-users who conduct short
transactions. Queries involved in such databases are generally simple, need fast
response times, and return relatively few records. A number of transactions per
second acts as an effective measure for such systems.

OLAP stands for Online Analytical Processing, a class of software programs that
are characterized by the relatively low frequency of online transactions. Queries are
often too complex and involve a bunch of aggregations. For OLAP systems, the
effectiveness measure relies highly on response time. Such systems are widely used
for data mining or maintaining aggregated, historical data, usually in multi-
dimensional schemas.

37. What is Collation? What are the different types of Collation Sensitivity?

Collation refers to a set of rules that determine how data is sorted and compared.
Rules defining the correct character sequence are used to sort the character data. It
incorporates options for specifying case sensitivity, accent marks, kana character
types, and character width. Below are the different types of collation sensitivity:

● Case sensitivity: A and a are treated differently.

● Accent sensitivity: a and á are treated differently.
● Kana sensitivity: Japanese kana characters Hiragana and Katakana are
treated differently.
● Width sensitivity: Same character represented in single-byte (half-width) and
double-byte (full-width) are treated differently.

38. What is a Stored Procedure?

A stored procedure is a subroutine available to applications that access a relational

database management system (RDBMS). Such procedures are stored in the
database data dictionary. The sole disadvantage of stored procedure is that it can be
executed nowhere except in the database and occupies more memory in the
database server. It also provides a sense of security and functionality as users who
can't access the data directly can be granted access via stored procedures.

DELIMITER $$
CREATE PROCEDURE FetchAllStudents()

BEGIN

SELECT * FROM myDB.students;

END $$

DELIMITER ;

39. What is a Recursive Stored Procedure?

A stored procedure that calls itself until a boundary condition is reached, is called a
recursive stored procedure. This recursive function helps the programmers to deploy
the same set of code several times as and when required. Some SQL programming
languages limit the recursion depth to prevent an infinite loop of procedure calls from
causing a stack overflow, which slows down the system and may lead to system
crashes.

DELIMITER $$ /* Set a new delimiter => $$ */

CREATE PROCEDURE calctotal( /* Create the procedure */

IN number INT, /* Set Input and Ouput variables */

OUT total INT

) BEGIN

DECLARE score INT DEFAULT NULL; /* Set the default value => "score" */

SELECT awards FROM achievements /* Update "score" via SELECT query */

WHERE id = number INTO score;

IF score IS NULL THEN SET total = 0; /* Termination condition */

ELSE

CALL calctotal(number+1); /* Recursive call */

SET total = total + score; /* Action after recursion */

END IF;

END $$ /* End of procedure */

DELIMITER ; /* Reset the delimiter */

40. How to create empty tables with the same structure as another table?

Creating empty tables with the same structure can be done smartly by fetching the
records of one table into a new table using the INTO operator while fixing a WHERE
clause to be false for all records. Hence, SQL prepares the new table with a
duplicate structure to accept the fetched records but since no records get fetched
due to the WHERE clause in action, nothing is inserted into the new table.

SELECT * INTO Students_copy

FROM Students WHERE 1 = 2;

41. What is Pattern Matching in SQL?

SQL pattern matching provides for pattern search in data if you have no clue as to
what that word should be. This kind of SQL query uses wildcards to match a string
pattern, rather than writing the exact word. The LIKE operator is used in conjunction
with SQL Wildcards to fetch the required information.

● Using the % wildcard to perform a simple search

The % wildcard matches zero or more characters of any type and can be used to
define wildcards both before and after the pattern. Search a student in your database
with first name beginning with the letter K:

SELECT *

FROM students

WHERE first_name LIKE 'K%'

● Omitting the patterns using the NOT keyword

Use the NOT keyword to select records that don't match the pattern. This query
returns all students whose first name does not begin with K.

SELECT *

FROM students

WHERE first_name NOT LIKE 'K%'

● Matching a pattern anywhere using the % wildcard twice

Search for a student in the database where he/she has a K in his/her first name.

SELECT *

FROM students
WHERE first_name LIKE '%Q%'
● Using the _ wildcard to match pattern at a specific position

The _ wildcard matches exactly one character of any type. It can be used in
conjunction with % wildcard. This query fetches all students with letter K at the third
position in their first name.

SELECT *

FROM students

WHERE first_name LIKE '__K%'

● Matching patterns for a specific length

The _ wildcard plays an important role as a limitation when it matches exactly one
character. It limits the length and position of the matched results. For example -

SELECT * /* Matches first names with three or more letters */

FROM students

WHERE first_name LIKE '___%'

SELECT * /* Matches first names with exactly four characters */

FROM students

WHERE first_name LIKE '____'

PostgreSQL Interview Questions

42. What is PostgreSQL?

PostgreSQL was first called Postgres and was developed by a team led by
Computer Science Professor Michael Stonebraker in 1986. It was developed to help
developers build enterprise-level applications by upholding data integrity by making
systems fault-tolerant. PostgreSQL is therefore an enterprise-level, flexible, robust,
open-source, and object-relational DBMS that supports flexible workloads along with
handling concurrent users. It has been consistently supported by the global
developer community. Due to its fault-tolerant nature, PostgreSQL has gained
widespread popularity among developers.

43. How do you define Indexes in PostgreSQL?

Indexes are the inbuilt functions in PostgreSQL which are used by the queries to
perform search more efficiently on a table in the database. Consider that you have a
table with thousands of records and you have the below query that only a few
records can satisfy the condition, then it will take a lot of time to search and return
those rows that abide by this condition as the engine has to perform the search
operation on every single to check this condition. This is undoubtedly inefficient for a
system dealing with huge data. Now if this system had an index on the column
where we are applying search, it can use an efficient method for identifying matching
rows by walking through only a few levels. This is called indexing.

Select * from some_table where table_col=120

44. How will you change the datatype of a column?

This can be done by using the ALTER TABLE statement as shown below:

Syntax:

ALTER TABLE tname

ALTER COLUMN col_name [SET DATA] TYPE new_data_type;

45. What is the command used for creating a database in PostgreSQL?

The first step of using PostgreSQL is to create a database. This is done by using the
createdb command as shown below: createdb db_name
After running the above command, if the database creation was successful, then the
below message is shown:

CREATE DATABASE

46. How can we start, restart and stop the PostgreSQL server?

● To start the PostgreSQL server, we run:

service postgresql start

● Once the server is successfully started, we get the below message:

Starting PostgreSQL: ok
● To restart the PostgreSQL server, we run:

service postgresql restart

Once the server is successfully restarted, we get the message:

Restarting PostgreSQL: server stopped

ok
● To stop the server, we run the command:
service postgresql stop

Once stopped successfully, we get the message:

Stopping PostgreSQL: server stopped

ok

47. What are partitioned tables called in PostgreSQL?

Partitioned tables are logical structures that are used for dividing large tables into
smaller structures that are called partitions. This approach is used for effectively
increasing the query performance while dealing with large database tables. To
create a partition, a key called partition key which is usually a table column or an
expression, and a partitioning method needs to be defined. There are three types of
inbuilt partitioning methods provided by Postgres:

● Range Partitioning: This method is done by partitioning based on a range of

values. This method is most commonly used upon date fields to get monthly,
weekly or yearly data. In the case of corner cases like value belonging to the
end of the range, for example: if the range of partition 1 is 10-20 and the
range of partition 2 is 20-30, and the given value is 10, then 10 belongs to the
second partition and not the first.
● List Partitioning: This method is used to partition based on a list of known
values. Most commonly used when we have a key with a categorical value.
For example, getting sales data based on regions divided as countries, cities,
or states.
● Hash Partitioning: This method utilizes a hash function upon the partition
key. This is done when there are no specific requirements for data division
and is used to access data individually. For example, you want to access data
based on a specific product, then using hash partition would result in the
dataset that we require.

The type of partition key and the type of method used for partitioning determines how
positive the performance and the level of manageability of the partitioned table are.

48. Define tokens in PostgreSQL?

A token in PostgreSQL is either a keyword, identifier, literal, constant, quotes

identifier, or any symbol that has a distinctive personality. They may or may not be
separated using a space, newline or a tab. If the tokens are keywords, they are
usually commands with useful meanings. Tokens are known as building blocks of
any PostgreSQL code.

49. What is the importance of the TRUNCATE statement?

TRUNCATE TABLE name_of_table statement removes the data efficiently and
quickly from the table.
The truncate statement can also be used to reset values of the identity columns
along with data cleanup as shown below:

TRUNCATE TABLE name_of_table

RESTART IDENTITY;

We can also use the statement for removing data from multiple tables all at once by
mentioning the table names separated by comma as shown below:

TRUNCATE TABLE

table_1,

table_2,

table_3;

50. What is the capacity of a table in PostgreSQL?

The maximum size of PostgreSQL is 32TB.

51. Define sequence.

A sequence is a schema-bound, user-defined object which aids to generate a

sequence of integers. This is most commonly used to generate values to identity
columns in a table. We can create a sequence by using the CREATE SEQUENCE
statement as shown below:

CREATE SEQUENCE serial_num START 100;

To get the next number 101 from the sequence, we use the nextval() method as
shown below:

SELECT nextval('serial_num');

We can also use this sequence while inserting new records using the INSERT
command:

INSERT INTO ib_table_name VALUES (nextval('serial_num'), 'interviewbit');

52. What are string constants in PostgreSQL?

They are character sequences bound within single quotes. These are using during
data insertion or updation to characters in the database.
There are special string constants that are quoted in dollars. Syntax:
$tag$<string_constant>$tag$ The tag in the constant is optional and when we are
not specifying the tag, the constant is called a double-dollar string literal.

53. How can you get a list of all databases in PostgreSQL?

This can be done by using the command \l -> backslash followed by the lower-case
letter L.

54. How can you delete a database in PostgreSQL?

This can be done by using the DROP DATABASE command as shown in the syntax
below:

DROP DATABASE database_name;

If the database has been deleted successfully, then the following message would be
shown:

DROP DATABASE

55. What are ACID properties? Is PostgreSQL compliant with ACID?

ACID stands for Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability. They are database
transaction properties which are used for guaranteeing data validity in case of errors
and failures.

● Atomicity: This property ensures that the transaction is completed in all-or-

nothing way.
● Consistency: This ensures that updates made to the database is valid and
follows rules and restrictions.
● Isolation: This property ensures integrity of transaction that are visible to all
other transactions.
● Durability: This property ensures that the committed transactions are stored
permanently in the database.

PostgreSQL is compliant with ACID properties.

56. Can you explain the architecture of PostgreSQL?

● The architecture of PostgreSQL follows the client-server model.

● The server side comprises of background process manager, query processer,
utilities and shared memory space which work together to build PostgreSQL’s
instance that has access to the data. The client application does the task of
connecting to this instance and requests data processing to the services. The
client can either be GUI (Graphical User Interface) or a web application. The
most commonly used client for PostgreSQL is pgAdmin.
57. What do you understand by multi-version concurrency control?

MVCC or Multi-version concurrency control is used for avoiding unnecessary

database locks when 2 or more requests tries to access or modify the data at the
same time. This ensures that the time lag for a user to log in to the database is
avoided. The transactions are recorded when anyone tries to access the content.

For more information regarding this, you can refer here.

58. What do you understand by command enable-debug?

The command enable-debug is used for enabling the compilation of all libraries and
applications. When this is enabled, the system processes get hindered and generally
also increases the size of the binary file. Hence, it is not recommended to switch this
on in the production environment. This is most commonly used by developers to
debug the bugs in their scripts and help them spot the issues. For more information
regarding how to debug, you can refer here.

59. How do you check the rows affected as part of previous transactions?

SQL standards state that the following three phenomena should be prevented whilst
concurrent transactions. SQL standards define 4 levels of transaction isolations to
deal with these phenomena.

● Dirty reads: If a transaction reads data that is written due to concurrent

uncommitted transaction, these reads are called dirty reads.
● Phantom reads: This occurs when two same queries when executed
separately return different rows. For example, if transaction A retrieves some
set of rows matching search criteria. Assume another transaction B retrieves
new rows in addition to the rows obtained earlier for the same search criteria.
The results are different.
● Non-repeatable reads: This occurs when a transaction tries to read the same
row multiple times and gets different values each time due to concurrency.
This happens when another transaction updates that data and our current
transaction fetches that updated data, resulting in different values.

To tackle these, there are 4 standard isolation levels defined by SQL standards.
They are as follows:

● Read Uncommitted – The lowest level of the isolations. Here, the

transactions are not isolated and can read data that are not committed by
other transactions resulting in dirty reads.
● Read Committed – This level ensures that the data read is committed at any
instant of read time. Hence, dirty reads are avoided here. This level makes
use of read/write lock on the current rows which prevents
 read/write/update/delete of that row when the current transaction is being
operated on.
● Repeatable Read – The most restrictive level of isolation. This holds read
and write locks for all rows it operates on. Due to this, non-repeatable reads
are avoided as other transactions cannot read, write, update or delete the
rows.
● Serializable – The highest of all isolation levels. This guarantees that the
execution is serializable where execution of any concurrent operations are
guaranteed to be appeared as executing serially.

The following table clearly explains which type of unwanted reads the levels avoid:

Isolation levels Dirty Phantom Non-repeatable

Reads Reads reads

Read
Uncommitted Might occur Might occur Might occur

Read Committed Won’t occurMight occur Might occur

Repeatable Read Won’t occurMight occur Won’t occur

Serializable Won’t occurWon’t occur Won’t occur

60. What can you tell about WAL (Write Ahead Logging)?

Write Ahead Logging is a feature that increases the database reliability by logging
changes before any changes are done to the database. This ensures that we have
enough information when a database crash occurs by helping to pinpoint to what
point the work has been complete and gives a starting point from the point where it
was discontinued.

For more information, you can refer here.

61. What is the main disadvantage of deleting data from an existing table using
the DROP TABLE command?

DROP TABLE command deletes complete data from the table along with removing
the complete table structure too. In case our requirement entails just remove the
data, then we would need to recreate the table to store data in it. In such cases, it is
advised to use the TRUNCATE command.

62. How do you perform case-insensitive searches using regular expressions

in PostgreSQL?
To perform case insensitive matches using a regular expression, we can use POSIX
(~*) expression from pattern matching operators. For example:

'interviewbit' ~* '.*INTervIewBit.*'

63. How will you take backup of the database in PostgreSQL?

We can achieve this by using the pg_dump tool for dumping all object contents in the
database into a single file. The steps are as follows:

Step 1: Navigate to the bin folder of the PostgreSQL installation path.

C:\>cd C:\Program Files\PostgreSQL\10.0\bin

Step 2: Execute pg_dump program to take the dump of data to a .tar folder as
shown below:

pg_dump -U postgres -W -F t sample_data > C:\Users\admin\pgbackup\

sample_data.tar

The database dump will be stored in the sample_data.tar file on the location
specified.

64. Does PostgreSQL support full text search?

Full-Text Search is the method of searching single or collection of documents stored

on a computer in a full-text based database. This is mostly supported in advanced
database systems like SOLR or ElasticSearch. However, the feature is present but is
pretty basic in PostgreSQL.

65. What are parallel queries in PostgreSQL?

Parallel Queries support is a feature provided in PostgreSQL for devising query

plans capable of exploiting multiple CPU processors to execute the queries faster.

66. Differentiate between commit and checkpoint.

The commit action ensures that the data consistency of the transaction is maintained
and it ends the current transaction in the section. Commit adds a new record in the
log that describes the COMMIT to the memory. Whereas, a checkpoint is used for
writing all changes that were committed to disk up to SCN which would be kept in
datafile headers and control files.

Conclusion:

SQL is a language for the database. It has a vast scope and robust capability of
creating and manipulating a variety of database objects using commands like
CREATE, ALTER, DROP, etc, and also in loading the database objects using
commands like INSERT. It also provides options for Data Manipulation using
commands like DELETE, TRUNCATE and also does effective retrieval of data using
cursor commands like FETCH, SELECT, etc. There are many such commands
which provide a large amount of control to the programmer to interact with the
database in an efficient way without wasting many resources. The popularity of SQL
has grown so much that almost every programmer relies on this to implement their
application's storage functionalities thereby making it an exciting language to learn.
Learning this provides the developer a benefit of understanding the data structures
used for storing the organization's data and giving an additional level of control and
in-depth understanding of the application.

PostgreSQL being an open-source database system having extremely robust and

sophisticated ACID, Indexing, and Transaction supports has found widespread
popularity among the developer community.

Section 3.1: Data Visualization: Power BI

𝐒𝐜𝐞𝐧𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐨-𝐁𝐚𝐬𝐞𝐝 𝐐𝐮𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬:

𝐒𝐜𝐞𝐧𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐨 1: Data Modeling for Sales Analysis:

Design a Power BI report to analyze sales performance across regions with varying levels of
granularity.

𝐒𝐜𝐞𝐧𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐨 2: Year-over-Year Growth Visualization:

Illustrate year-over-year growth in product sales effectively within Power BI.

𝐒𝐜𝐞𝐧𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐨 3: Data Cleaning and Transformation:

Detail your approach to cleaning and preparing data efficiently in Power BI.

𝐒c𝐞𝐧𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐨 4: Real-time Data Integration:

Implement and manage live data connections for real-time insights in Power BI reports.

𝐒𝐜𝐞𝐧𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐨 5: Performance Optimization:

Diagnose and address performance issues to optimize Power BI report loading and refreshing
times.

𝐁𝐚𝐬𝐢𝐜 𝐏𝐨𝐰𝐞𝐫 𝐁𝐈 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐜𝐞𝐩𝐭𝐬:

1. Can you walk me through your experience with Power BI and how you've used it in your
previous roles?
2. What are some key benefits of using Power BI for data analysis and visualization?
3. Can you explain the difference between Power BI Desktop and Power BI Service?
4. How do you handle large datasets in Power BI to ensure optimal performance?
5. Have you utilized Power BI's data modeling capabilities in your projects? If so, can you
provide an example?
6. What strategies do you employ for data cleansing and manipulation in Power BI?
7. Can you discuss a challenging data visualization problem you've encountered in Power BI
and how you solved it?
8. How do you approach creating interactive dashboards in Power BI to meet user
requirements?
9. Have you worked with Power BI's integration with other Microsoft tools like Excel or SQL
Server? If so, can you elaborate on your experience?
10. How do you stay updated with new features and updates in Power BI?
11. Can you provide an example of a complex calculation you've implemented using DAX in
Power BI?
12. What are some common pitfalls to avoid when designing Power BI reports and dashboards?
13. How do you ensure data security and compliance when working with sensitive data in Power
BI?
14. Have you worked on any projects involving real-time data streaming in Power BI? If so, how
did you set it up?
15. Can you discuss a time when you had to troubleshoot and resolve a technical issue in Power
BI?
 Section 3.2: Tableau
a. What are dimensions and measures usually contain

b. What are discrete and continuous fields and how are they displayed
c. Explain the difference between discrete dateparts and continuous date values
d. Explain why Tableau aggregates measures

1. Which of the following is the best reason to use an extract instead of a live connection?
Answer: You need to apply an aggregation that takes too long when using a live
connection.

2. You created a group by selecting field labels in a view. How can you remove members from the
group?
Answer: In the Data pane, right-click the group and select Edit Group.

3. Interactive elements that you can add to a dashboard for users include .

Answer: URL actions & filter actions.

4. A field that shows average home values for the United

States in 2016 is most likely:
Answer: An aggregated measure. The following questions use the
tables in the tds_sample_data_all.xlsx file, which can be
downloaded here.
You may find there are other ways to determine the correct
answer. The focus for this exam is the destination (i.e. accuracy),
rather than the journey

5. Using the Stocks 2010-2013 table, create a chart to see the monthly change in volumes of stocks,
the beginning of 2010 to the end of 2013. Which two consecutive months saw the least fluctuation
in increase or decrease?
The correct answer is March 2012 - April 2012.

The answer to this question can be found by placing the continuous month date value (May 2015)
format on Columns, and placing SUM(Volume) on Rows.
6. Using the Stocks 2010-2013 table, create a crosstab showing the sum of Volume per
Company per Year, then add grand totals to the view. What was the total volume for
Apple in 2013 and the total volume for Apple for 2010 through 2013, respectively?
The correct answer is 25,606,397,999 and 127,322,019,216.

The answer to this question can be found by placing YEAR(Date) on columns and
Company on rows. Drag SUM(Volume) to labels.
7. Using the Stocks 2010-2013 table, create a chart that shows the percent difference
in Volume for each company by year and quarter. How many quarters did Biogen
Idec show a positive percent difference in volume?
The correct answer is 6.

The answer to this question can be found by placing Company and Volume on Rows,
and Date on Columns. On Columns, click the plus sign on YEAR(Date) to add
QUARTER(Date) to the view.
8. Using the Flights table, create a bar chart showing the average of Minutes of Delay per Flight
broken down by Carrier Name, and filtered by State to only show Minnesota (MN). What was the
average minutes of delay per flight for United in Minnesota?

The correct answer is 62.98.\

The answer to this question can be found by placing Carrier Name on Rows. Then place
SUM(Minutes of De- lay per Flight) on Columns and change the measure’s aggregation to Average