Sql-Interview

This is a post in the SQL Interview series. These aren’t trick or gotcha questions, they’re just questions designed to scope out a candidate’s knowledge around SQL Server and Azure SQL Database.

Section: Development Level: Medium

Question:

You have a column in your database that is defined as char(20). Whenever you query it, 20 characters are returned, with space padding any unused characters.

An administrator has suggested applying ROW compression to the table, to save space and improve performance.

2025-04-23

This is a post in the SQL Interview series. These aren’t trick or gotcha questions, they’re just questions designed to scope out a candidate’s knowledge around SQL Server and Azure SQL Database.

Section: Administration Level: Medium

Question:

A developer in your team has suggested applying PAGE compression to all tables and indexes in your application database.

You are concerned that doing so might impact performance, and that ROW compression might be better.

2025-04-19

This is a post in the SQL Interview series. These aren’t trick or gotcha questions, they’re just questions designed to scope out a candidate’s knowledge around SQL Server and Azure SQL Database.

Section: Administration Level: Advanced

Question:

You need to write code to avoid the impact of indexes during data loads.

You could DROP and CREATE the indexes, or you could DISABLE and REBUILD them.

Which should you choose and why? How would the performance compare between the two options?

2025-04-15

This is a post in the SQL Interview series. These aren’t trick or gotcha questions, they’re just questions designed to scope out a candidate’s knowledge around SQL Server and Azure SQL Database.

Section: Administration Level: Medium

Question:

You are using linked servers to refer to tables in a database on another server.

You are concerned that the name of the server appears in three-part table names throughout your code. If the linked server name changes, it would be very messy to locate and correct all references to it.

2025-04-13

This is a post in the SQL Interview series. These aren’t trick or gotcha questions, they’re just questions designed to scope out a candidate’s knowledge around SQL Server and Azure SQL Database.

Section: Development Level: Medium

Question:

You are reading a T-SQL script. One MERGE statement merges data from TableA into TableB, and contains two clauses:

WHEN NOT MATCHED BY SOURCE

and

WHEN NOT MATCHED BY TARGET

What is the difference between these? And what is the most common operation that’s executed in each of these clauses?

2025-04-11

This is a post in the SQL Interview series. These aren’t trick or gotcha questions, they’re just questions designed to scope out a candidate’s knowledge around SQL Server and Azure SQL Database.

Section: Administration Level: Medium

Question:

You query the sys.databases view and notice that the value in the physical_database_name column for a database is different to the name column.

Can you give an example of why this might occur?

2025-04-04

This is a post in the SQL Interview series. These aren’t trick or gotcha questions, they’re just questions designed to scope out a candidate’s knowledge around SQL Server and Azure SQL Database.

Section: Development Level: Medium

Question:

You have a scalar T-SQL function in SQL Server and want to change it.

Apart from permissions, what would stop you from using ALTER FUNCTION to change it?

Answer:

You can’t change from an inline function to a multi-statement function.

2025-03-29

This is a post in the SQL Interview series. These aren’t trick or gotcha questions, they’re just questions designed to scope out a candidate’s knowledge around SQL Server and Azure SQL Database.

Section: Administration Level: Intro

Question:

You have an Azure SQL Database.

How can you create a copy of the Azure SQL Database on the same logical server?

Answer:

The easiest option is to use the CREATE DATABASE AS COPY OF command.

2025-03-25

This is a post in the SQL Interview series. These aren’t trick or gotcha questions, they’re just questions designed to scope out a candidate’s knowledge around SQL Server and Azure SQL Database.

Section: Administration Level: Advanced

Question:

Your session is connected to a database named PublicWorks.

You want to create a temporary stored procedure, that only lasts until your session has ended. It should be available to all other sessions while your session is still active.

2025-03-23

This is a post in the SQL Interview series. These aren’t trick or gotcha questions, they’re just questions designed to scope out a candidate’s knowledge around SQL Server and Azure SQL Database.

Section: Development Level: Medium

Question:

You need to add a new column to a table.

A developer insists that the column needs to be inserted into the middle of the existing table, not as a new column at the end.

2025-03-21