Oracle SQL Queries Asked In Symantec Written Test

Oracle SQL Queries Most Frequently Asked In Symantec Written Test Interview

Get the first day of the month?

Quickly returns the first day of current month. Instead of current month you want to find first day of month where a date falls, replace SYSDATE with any date column/value.

SELECT TRUNC (SYSDATE, 'MONTH') "First day of current month"
    FROM DUAL;

Get the last day of the month?

This query is similar to above but returns last day of current month. One thing worth noting is that it automatically takes care of leap year. So if you have 29 days in Feb, it will return 29/2. Also similar to above query replace SYSDATE with any other date column/value to find last day of that particular month.

SELECT TRUNC (LAST_DAY (SYSDATE)) "Last day of current month"
    FROM DUAL;

Get the first day of the Year

First day of year is always 1-Jan. This query can be use in stored procedure where you quickly want first day of year for some calculation.

SELECT TRUNC (SYSDATE, 'YEAR') "Year First Day" FROM DUAL;

Get the last day of the year

Similar to above query. Instead of first day this query returns last day of current year.

SELECT ADD_MONTHS (TRUNC (SYSDATE, 'YEAR'), 12) - 1 "Year Last Day" FROM DUAL

Get number of days in current month

Now this is useful. This query returns number of days in current month. You can change SYSDATE with any date/value to know number of days in that month.

SELECT CAST (TO_CHAR (LAST_DAY (SYSDATE), 'dd') AS INT) number_of_days
  FROM DUAL;

Get number of days left in current month

Below query calculates number of days left in current month.

SELECT SYSDATE,
       LAST_DAY (SYSDATE) "Last",
       LAST_DAY (SYSDATE) - SYSDATE "Days left"
  FROM DUAL;
Oracle SQL Queries Most Frequently Asked In Symantec Written Test Interview
Oracle SQL Queries Most Frequently Asked In Symantec Written Test Interview

Get number of days between two dates

Use this query to get difference between two dates in number of days.

SELECT ROUND ( (MONTHS_BETWEEN ('01-Feb-2014', '01-Mar-2012') * 30), 0)
          num_of_days
  FROM DUAL;

OR

SELECT TRUNC(sysdate) - TRUNC(e.hire_date) FROM employees;
Use second query if you need to find number of days since some specific date. In this example number of days since any employee is hired.

Display each months start and end date upto last month of the year

This clever query displays start date and end date of each month in current year. You might want to use this for certain types of calculations.

SELECT ADD_MONTHS (TRUNC (SYSDATE, 'MONTH'), i) start_date,
       TRUNC (LAST_DAY (ADD_MONTHS (SYSDATE, i))) end_date
  FROM XMLTABLE (
          'for $i in 0 to xs:int(D) return $i'
          PASSING XMLELEMENT (
                     d,
                     FLOOR (
                        MONTHS_BETWEEN (
                           ADD_MONTHS (TRUNC (SYSDATE, 'YEAR') - 1, 12),
                           SYSDATE)))
          COLUMNS i INTEGER PATH '.');

Get number of seconds passed since today (since 00:00 hr)

SELECT (SYSDATE - TRUNC (SYSDATE)) * 24 * 60 * 60 num_of_sec_since_morning
  FROM DUAL;

Get number of seconds left today (till 23:59:59 hr)

SELECT (TRUNC (SYSDATE+1) - SYSDATE) * 24 * 60 * 60 num_of_sec_left
  FROM DUAL;

Check if a table exists in the current database schema

A simple query that can be used to check if a table exists before you create it. This way you can make your create table script rerunnable. Just replace table_name with actual table you want to check. This query will check if table exists for current user (from where the query is executed).

SELECT table_name
  FROM user_tables
 WHERE table_name = 'TABLE_NAME';

Check if a column exists in a table

Simple query to check if a particular column exists in table. Useful when you tries to add new column in table using ALTER TABLE statement, you might wanna check if column already exists before adding one.

SELECT column_name AS FOUND
  FROM user_tab_cols
 WHERE table_name = 'TABLE_NAME' AND column_name = 'COLUMN_NAME';

Showing the table structure

This query gives you the DDL statement for any table. Notice we have pass ‘TABLE’ as first parameter. This query can be generalized to get DDL statement of any database object. For example to get DDL for a view just replace first argument with ‘VIEW’ and second with your view name and so.

SELECT DBMS_METADATA.get_ddl ('TABLE', 'TABLE_NAME', 'USER_NAME') FROM DUAL;

Getting current schema

Yet another query to get current schema name.

SELECT SYS_CONTEXT ('userenv', 'current_schema') FROM DUAL;

Changing current schema

Yet another query to change the current schema. Useful when your script is expected to run under certain user but is actually executed by other user. It is always safe to set the current user to what your script expects.

ALTER SESSION SET CURRENT_SCHEMA = new_schema;

Database version information

Returns the Oracle database version.

SELECT * FROM v$version;

Database default information

Some system default information.

SELECT username,
       profile,
       default_tablespace,
       temporary_tablespace
  FROM dba_users;

Database Character Set information

Display the character set information of database.

SELECT * FROM nls_database_parameters;

Get Oracle version

SELECT VALUE
  FROM v$system_parameter
 WHERE name = 'compatible';

Write a SQL query to find the products which have continuous increase in sales every year?

Solution:

Here “Iphone” is the only product whose sales are increasing every year.

STEP1: First we will get the previous year sales for each product. The SQL query to do this is

SELECT P.PRODUCT_NAME,
       S.YEAR,
       S.QUANTITY,
       LEAD(S.QUANTITY,1,0) OVER (
                            PARTITION BY P.PRODUCT_ID
                            ORDER BY S.YEAR DESC
                            ) QUAN_PREV_YEAR
FROM   PRODUCTS P,
       SALES S
WHERE  P.PRODUCT_ID = S.PRODUCT_ID;

Here the lead analytic function will get the quantity of a product in its previous year.

STEP 2: We will find the difference between the quantities of a product with its previous year’s quantity. If this difference is greater than or equal to zero for all the rows, then the product is a constantly increasing in sales. The final query to get the required result is

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

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

Write a SQL query to find the products which does not have sales at all?

Solution:

“LG” is the only product which does not have sales at all. This can be achieved in three ways.

Method 1: Using left outer join.

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

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

Method 2: Using the NOT IN operator.

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

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

Method 3: Using the NOT EXISTS operator.

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

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

Write a SQL query to find the products whose sales decreased in 2012 compared to 2011?

Solution:

Here Nokia is the only product whose sales decreased in year 2012 when compared with the sales in the year 2011. The SQL query to get the required output is

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

PRODUCT_NAME
------------
Nokia

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