Top 50 Basic Level SQL Interview Questions – Beginners Guide

Q41. What is the IN operator?

Answer:
IN allows you to specify multiple values in a WHERE clause.

Example: SELECT * FROM Employees WHERE Department IN ('HR', 'Finance');


Q42. What is the EXISTS operator?

Answer:
EXISTS checks if a subquery returns any records.

Example: SELECT Name FROM Employees
WHERE EXISTS (SELECT 1 FROM Departments WHERE Employees.DepartmentID = Departments.DepartmentID);


Q43. What is a CASE statement in SQL?

Answer:
CASE is used for conditional logic inside SQL queries.

Example: SELECT Name,
CASE
WHEN Age < 18 THEN 'Minor'
ELSE 'Adult'
END AS Status
FROM Employees;


Q44. What is COALESCE function?

Answer:
COALESCE returns the first non-NULL value among its arguments.

Example: SELECT Name, COALESCE(Address, 'Address Not Available') FROM Customers;


Q45. What is the ISNULL() function?

Answer:
ISNULL() replaces NULL with a specified replacement value.

Example: SELECT ISNULL(Address, 'N/A') FROM Customers;


Q46. What is the DISTINCT keyword?

Answer:
DISTINCT is used to return only unique (different) values.

Example: SELECT DISTINCT Department FROM Employees;


Q47. What is the LIKE operator in SQL?

Answer:
(Already given earlier, here again with simple version)

SELECT * FROM Customers WHERE CustomerName LIKE 'A%';

Finds all customer names starting with ‘A’.


Q48. What is an Aggregate Function?

Answer:
Aggregate functions perform a calculation on a set of values and return a single value.

Function Use
COUNT() Counts number of rows
SUM() Calculates total sum
AVG() Calculates average
MAX() Finds maximum value
MIN() Finds minimum value

Q49. What is a Scalar Function?

Answer:
Scalar functions operate on a single value and return a single value.

Example Function Purpose
UPPER() Converts to uppercase
LOWER() Converts to lowercase
LEN() Returns string length

Q50. What is the difference between CHAR and VARCHAR?

Answer:

CHAR VARCHAR
Fixed length Variable length
Always reserves space Uses only required space
Faster access Saves memory

Example:

CHAR(10): Reserves 10 bytes even if 5 characters entered.

VARCHAR(10): Uses only 5 bytes if 5 characters entered.

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