8 SimCorp SQL Interview Questions (Updated 2024)
At SimCorp, SQL is used often for analyzing complex financial data for insights, and managing extensive investment portfolios for optimal asset management. That's why SimCorp frequently asks SQL questions during interviews for Data Analytics, Data Science, and Data Engineering jobs.
Thus, to help you practice for the SimCorp SQL interview, we've curated 8 SimCorp SQL interview questions – able to solve them?
8 SimCorp SQL Interview Questions
SQL Question 1: Analyzing Asset Performance Over Time
SimCorp is a leading provider of integrated investment management solutions. For an interview with SimCorp, the question may revolve around analyzing asset performance data.
Let's imagine we have a table 'asset_performance' that logs the daily value of different assets over time.
Example Input:
| date | asset_id | value |
|---|---|---|
| 2022-06-01 | A1 | 1500 |
| 2022-06-02 | A1 | 1550 |
| 2022-06-03 | A1 | 1530 |
| 2022-06-01 | A2 | 5000 |
| 2022-06-02 | A2 | 5050 |
| 2022-06-03 | A2 | 5070 |
The interview question could be: Write a SQL query to calculate the one-day return (percentage change in value from the previous day) of each asset using window functions. The output should include date, asset_id, value, and one_day_return columns for each row, sorted by asset_id and date.
Describe the logic of your SQL statements well.
Answer:
In this query, we use the LAG() window function to access the previous row's 'value' within a partition defined by 'asset_id'. We order by 'date' to ensure that we're comparing values from consecutive dates.
We then calculate the one-day return as the percentage change in value ((current value/previous value) - 1) * 100.
We do this for each asset in 'asset_performance', and finally sort the results by 'asset_id' and 'date' for easy reading. This allows us to see how each asset's value changes from day to day in percentage terms. This is an important type of analysis that can provide insights into asset performance over time.
To solve a similar window function interview problem which uses RANK() on DataLemur's free online SQL coding environment, try this Amazon BI Engineer interview question:
SQL Question 2: Financial Asset Transactional Volume
SimCorp develops software and financial models for asset managers. Let's assume they have two main tables, one for "Assets" and another for "Asset Transactions". The "Assets" table contains information about all assets, such as their unique asset codes, types, registrant countries etc. The "Asset Transactions" table tracks all transactions such as buy/sell operations with timestamps.
Your task would be to write an SQL query that returns the top 5 assets by total transaction volume in a given year. For instance, for the year 2022, the query should return the five assets with the highest combined buy + sell volume.
Example Input:
| asset_code | asset_type | registrant_country |
|---|---|---|
| A1001 | Equity | USA |
| A2002 | Debt | Germany |
| A3001 | Equity | Japan |
| A4007 | ETF | USA |
| A5008 | Debt | UK |
Example Input:
| transaction_id | asset_code | transaction_type | transaction_volume | transaction_date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| T001 | A1001 | BUY | 15000 | 01/10/2022 |
| T002 | A1001 | SELL | 5000 | 02/15/2022 |
| T003 | A2002 | BUY | 20000 | 03/25/2022 |
| T004 | A2002 | SELL | 6000 | 04/02/2022 |
| T005 | A3001 | BUY | 10000 | 05/13/2022 |
Answer:
This query joins the "assets" table with the "asset_transactions" table on the "asset_code" field. It then groups the data by the "asset_code" and "asset_type" columns and calculates the sum of all the transaction volumes in a particular year. The 'ORDER BY total_volume DESC' sorts the data in descending order by the total transaction volume and 'LIMIT 5' is used to select the top 5 records.
SQL Question 3: How can you select unique records from a table?
The clause in SQL allows you to select records that are unique, eliminating duplicates.
For example, if you had a table of SimCorp employees, and wanted to see what are all the unique job titles that currently worked at the company, you could write the following query:
SQL Question 4: Average Duration of Projects
As an analyst for SimCorp, a provider of investment management solutions, you are tasked to analyze the projects executed by the company. Specifically, you should find the average duration of the projects by each project manager based on the 'projects' table below.
Example Input:
Answer:
This query first calculates the duration of each project with the function. Then it calculates the average duration () of the projects for each project manager ().
To practice a very similar question try this interactive Facebook Average Post Hiatus (Part 1) Question which is similar for calculating duration between two dates or this Amazon Server Utilization Time Question which is similar for figuring out timespan based on start and end dates.
SQL Question 5: What's the SQL command do, and can you give an example?
combines the results from two or more SELECT statements, but only returns the rows that are exactly the same between the two sets.
For example, say you were doing an HR Analytics project for SimCorp, and had access to SimCorp's contractors and employees data. Assume that some employees were previously contractors, and vice versa, and thus would show up in both tables. You could use operator to find all employees who also show up in the contractors table:
SQL Question 6: Average Trading Volume by Month for Each Security
As an analyst at SimCorp, a leading provider of investment management solutions, you are requested to analyze trading volumes for different securities in the recent months. Analyzing trading volume can reveal the liquidity of a security and the interest of investors.
Your task is to write an SQL query that retrieves the average trading volumes (average ) by month () for each .
Example Input:
| trade_id | trade_date | security_id | volume |
|---|---|---|---|
| 9124 | 2022-03-01 | S100 | 50000 |
| 8736 | 2022-03-15 | S200 | 35000 |
| 7651 | 2022-03-28 | S100 | 55000 |
| 7205 | 2022-04-12 | S200 | 37000 |
| 6343 | 2022-04-29 | S100 | 52000 |
Example Output:
| mth | security | avg_volume |
|---|---|---|
| 3 | S100 | 52500.00 |
| 3 | S200 | 35000.00 |
| 4 | S100 | 52000.00 |
| 4 | S200 | 37000.00 |
Answer:
Here is a PostgreSQL query to get the result.
In this query, we first extract the month from the using the function. Then we calculate the average trading volume () for each month () and () using the aggregate function. is combined with the aggregate function to compute average volumes per month for each security. Finally, we use to order the result by and in ascending order.
SQL Question 7: What's the difference between window functions and ?
In SQL, both and are used to rank rows within a result set. The key difference between the two functions is how deal with two or more rows having the same value in the ranked column (aka how the break ties).
RANK(): When there's a tie, leaves a gap in the ranking. For example, if three rows are tied for 2nd place, the RANK() function will assign a rank of 2 to the first of these rows, a rank of 3 to the second row, and a rank of 4 to the third row.
DENSE_RANK(): For ties, does not leave a gap in the ranking. Instead, it assigns the same rank to all tied rows, and then makes the next row 1 bigger. Confusing, I know, but here's an example to make it more clear: if three rows are tied for 3rd place, the function will assign a rank of 3 to all three rows, and then assign a rank of 4 to the next row.
SQL Question 8: Combine Customer and Orders Tables
SimCorp is a firm dealing in financial software and services. Imagine they have a table that registers the details of their clients and an table that records all the orders.
To get a better understanding of their clients' purchasing behavior, they want to link each order to the corresponding customer. Write an SQL query that combines both the 'customers' and 'orders' tables on the basis of 'customer_id.'
We are interested specifically in customers who have placed an order and we want to know their names, age, the order id, and the amount of their orders.
Example Input:
| customer_id | name | age |
|---|---|---|
| 1001 | John Smith | 28 |
| 1002 | Sarah Brown | 42 |
| 1003 | Michael Johnson | 35 |
Example Input:
| order_id | customer_id | amount |
|---|---|---|
| 5678 | 1002 | 345.50 |
| 5679 | 1003 | 298.99 |
| 5680 | 1001 | 149.99 |
Answer:
This SQL query joins the 'customers' and 'orders' tables on the 'customer_id' field using an inner join. This operation will only return the records where there is a match in both 'customers' and 'orders' tables. More specifically, the output will show the name and age of the customers along with their specific order id and the amount value of their orders.
Because join questions come up so often during SQL interviews, take a stab at this Snapchat SQL Interview question using JOINS:
SimCorp SQL Interview Tips
Assuming that you've already got basic SQL skills, the next best tip we have to prepare for the SimCorp SQL interview is to solve as many practice SQL interview questions as you can!
Besides solving the earlier SimCorp SQL interview questions, you should also solve the 200+ SQL questions on DataLemur which come from companies like Facebook, Google and unicorn tech startups.
Each interview question has hints to guide you, detailed solutions and crucially, there is an interactive SQL code editor so you can right online code up your SQL query answer and have it graded.
To prep for the SimCorp SQL interview you can also be helpful to practice interview questions from other tech companies like:
In case your SQL skills are weak, forget about diving straight into solving questions – refresh your SQL knowledge with this SQL tutorial for Data Scientists & Analysts.
This tutorial covers topics including joining a table to itself and different types of joins – both of these come up often during SQL interviews at SimCorp.
SimCorp Data Science Interview Tips
What Do SimCorp Data Science Interviews Cover?
In addition to SQL interview questions, the other types of questions covered in the SimCorp Data Science Interview are:
- Probability & Stats Questions
- Python Pandas or R Coding Questions
- Business Sense and Product-Sense Questions
- ML Modelling Questions
- Resume-Based Behavioral Questions
How To Prepare for SimCorp Data Science Interviews?
The best way to prepare for SimCorp Data Science interviews is by reading Ace the Data Science Interview. The book's got:
- 201 Interview Questions from Google, Microsoft & tech startups
- A Refresher covering SQL, Product-Sense & ML
- Amazing Reviews (900+ 5-star reviews on Amazon)