ValueLabs Oracle SQL Queries In Written Test Interview Questions

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';

Store data case sensitive but to index it case insensitive

Now this ones tricky. Sometime you might querying database on some value independent of case. In your query you might do UPPER(..) = UPPER(..) on both sides to make it case insensitive. Now in such cases, you might want to make your index case insensitive so that they don’t occupy more space. Feel free to experiment with this one.

CREATE TABLE tab (col1 VARCHAR2 (10));

CREATE INDEX idx1
   ON tab (UPPER (col1));

ANALYZE TABLE a COMPUTE STATISTICS;

ValueLabs Frequently Asked Oracle SQL Queries In Written Test Interview Questions

Resizing Tablespace without adding datafile

Yet another DDL query to resize table space.

ALTER DATABASE DATAFILE '/work/oradata/STARTST/STAR02D.dbf' resize 2000M;

Checking autoextend on/off for Tablespaces

Query to check if autoextend is on or off for a given tablespace.

SELECT SUBSTR (file_name, 1, 50), AUTOEXTENSIBLE FROM dba_data_files;

(OR)

SELECT tablespace_name, AUTOEXTENSIBLE FROM dba_data_files;

Adding datafile to a tablespace

Query to add datafile in a tablespace.

ALTER TABLESPACE data01 ADD DATAFILE '/work/oradata/STARTST/data01.dbf'
    SIZE 1000M AUTOEXTEND OFF;

Increasing datafile size

Yet another query to increase the datafile size of a given datafile.

ALTER DATABASE DATAFILE '/u01/app/Test_data_01.dbf' RESIZE 2G;

Find the Actual size of a Database

Gives the actual database size in GB.

SELECT SUM (bytes) / 1024 / 1024 / 1024 AS GB FROM dba_data_files;

Find the size occupied by Data in a Database or Database usage details

Gives the size occupied by data in this database.

SELECT SUM (bytes) / 1024 / 1024 / 1024 AS GB FROM dba_segments;

Find the size of the SCHEMA/USER

Give the size of user in MBs.

SELECT SUM (bytes / 1024 / 1024) "size"
  FROM dba_segments
 WHERE owner = '&owner';

Convert Comma Separated Values into Table

The query can come quite handy when you have comma separated data string that you need to convert into table so that you can use other SQL queries like IN or NOT IN. Here we are converting ‘AA,BB,CC,DD,EE,FF’ string to table containing AA, BB, CC etc. as each row. Once you have this table you can join it with other table to quickly do some useful stuffs.

WITH csv
     AS (SELECT 'AA,BB,CC,DD,EE,FF'
                   AS csvdata
           FROM DUAL)
    SELECT REGEXP_SUBSTR (csv.csvdata, '[^,]+', 1, LEVEL) pivot_char
      FROM DUAL, csv
CONNECT BY REGEXP_SUBSTR (csv.csvdata,'[^,]+', 1, LEVEL) IS NOT NULL;

Find the last record from a table

This ones straight forward. Use this when your table does not have primary key or you cannot be sure if record having max primary key is the latest one.

SELECT *
  FROM employees
 WHERE ROWID IN (SELECT MAX (ROWID) FROM employees);

(OR)

SELECT * FROM employees
MINUS
SELECT *
  FROM employees
 WHERE ROWNUM < (SELECT COUNT (*) FROM employees);

Row Data Multiplication in Oracle

This query use some tricky math functions to multiply values from each row. Read below article for more details.
More info: Row Data Multiplication In Oracle

WITH tbl
     AS (SELECT -2 num FROM DUAL
         UNION
         SELECT -3 num FROM DUAL
         UNION
         SELECT -4 num FROM DUAL),
     sign_val
     AS (SELECT CASE MOD (COUNT (*), 2) WHEN 0 THEN 1 ELSE -1 END val
           FROM tbl
          WHERE num < 0)
  SELECT EXP (SUM (LN (ABS (num)))) * val
    FROM tbl, sign_val
GROUP BY val;

Generating Random Data In Oracle

You might want to generate some random data to quickly insert in table for testing. Below query help you do that. Read this article for more details.
More info: Random Data in Oracle

SELECT LEVEL empl_id,
           MOD (ROWNUM, 50000) dept_id,
           TRUNC (DBMS_RANDOM.VALUE (1000, 500000), 2) salary,
           DECODE (ROUND (DBMS_RANDOM.VALUE (1, 2)),  1, 'M',  2, 'F') gender,
           TO_DATE (
                 ROUND (DBMS_RANDOM.VALUE (1, 28))
              || '-'
              || ROUND (DBMS_RANDOM.VALUE (1, 12))
              || '-'
              || ROUND (DBMS_RANDOM.VALUE (1900, 2010)),
              'DD-MM-YYYY')
              dob,
           DBMS_RANDOM.STRING ('x', DBMS_RANDOM.VALUE (20, 50)) address
      FROM DUAL
CONNECT BY LEVEL < 10000;

Random number generator in Oracle

Plain old random number generator in Oracle. This ones generate a random number between 0 and 100. Change the multiplier to number that you want to set limit for.

--generate random number between 0 and 100
SELECT ROUND (DBMS_RANDOM.VALUE () * 100) + 1 AS random_num FROM DUAL;

Check if table contains any data

This one can be written in multiple ways. You can create count(*) on a table to know number of rows. But this query is more efficient given the fact that we are only interested in knowing if table has any data.

SELECT 1
  FROM TABLE_NAME
 WHERE ROWNUM = 1;