SQL Interview Questions

Here is a collection of Microsoft SQL Server interview questions.
Basic Concepts

• Filtered index
• Common Table Expression
• Derived tables
• Fill factor
• Clustered Index
• Heap table
• OLTP vs. OLAP
• Star schema
• What are the differences between SQL developer, standard and enterprise editions
• local vs. global temporary table
• sparse columns
• Functions: STUFF, PATINDEX, RANK, NTILE
• SCOPE_IDENTITY vs. @@IDENTITY
  
• XML support
• Geo-spatial data support
• CLR integration
• Replication
  

Breadth

• NoSQL
• Column based RDBMS

Best Practices

• What are the performance best practices
• What are the security best practices
  

Coding Skills

• How to select top N records without using TOP
• Write a stored procedure to check out one job with columns: JobID, Status (new, checked out, done), priority
  
• Write a stored procedure to atomically insert records into the following tables with error handling
  

Table A
---------
ID
Name

Table B
---------
ID
Name

Table A_B
---------
ID_A
ID_B