9 Texas Instruments SQL Interview Questions (Updated 2024)

At Texas Instruments, SQL is used quite frequently for analyzing semiconductor manufacturing data and optimizing supply chain performance. That's why Texas Instruments often tests SQL problems during interviews for Data Analytics, Data Science, and Data Engineering jobs.

To prepare for the TI SQL interview, we've collected 9 Texas Instruments SQL interview questions to practice – able to answer them all?

9 Texas Instruments SQL Interview Questions

SQL Question 1: Sales Analysis of Semiconductor Devices

Texas Instruments, a technology company, is interested in knowing the performance of each type of their semiconductor devices in terms of total sales quantity sold and their average selling prices over a one-year period. Their dataset contains the following information: each transaction's purchasing date, purchasing quantity, and selling price.

The company is specifically interested in a rolling 3-month average selling price and total quantity sold each month for each type of semiconductor device starting from 2022. Use PostgreSQL and write a SQL query that uses window functions to solve the company’s needs.

Example Input:

Example Output:

Answer:

In the above query, we first collect the monthly data for each device. The SUM() function together with OVER() and PARTITION BY is used to calculate the quantity sold each month for each device.
The AVG() function together with OVER() and PARTITION BY is used to compute the average price with a rolling window of 3 months.
Finally, we select the distinct rows from the monthly data, ordered by year, month, and device type.

To practice a similar window function question on DataLemur's free online SQL coding environment, try this Google SQL Interview Question:

SQL Question 2: Inventory Management

Texas Instruments sells a variety of electronic components. They want to track their inventory levels across various locations. They also want to know the past transactions for each item. To do this, they'll need the following tables: 'products', 'locations', and 'transactions'.

Design these tables and create a SQL query that shows the current inventory level for product 'P001' in location 'L001'.

Example Input:

Example Input:

Example Input:

Answer:

The table structure involves and tables which maintain product details and location details respectively. The table captures the inventory transactions with the quantity added or removed (as negative quantity).

Above query gives you the current inventory for product 'P001' at location 'L001' by summing up all the transaction quantities for that particular product and location.

Remember to replace 'P001' and 'L001' with your actual product_id and location_id.

SQL Question 3: What's database denormalization?

Denormalization is a technique used to improve the read performance of a database, typically at the expense of some write performance.

By adding redundant copies of data or grouping data together in a way that does not follow normalization rules, denormalization improves the performance and scalability of a database by eliminating costly join operations, which is important for OLAP use cases that are read-heavy and have minimal updates/inserts.

SQL Question 4: Calculate the Average Quantity of Each Product Sold by Month

Texas Instruments is a popular technology company known for its semiconductors and various electronic devices. As a data analyst for Texas Instruments, you may be asked to analyze their sales data. Here is one potential SQL interview question:

"Find the average quantity of each product sold per month for the year 2022."

Let's consider a table that includes the details of products sold such as the transaction id, product id, quantity, and the transaction date.

Example Input:

We need to obtain an output which shows the month, product id, and the average quantity sold.

Example Output:

Answer:

First, we can extract the month from the transaction_date then use the function in PostgreSQL to calculate the average quantity of each product sold per month.

This query calculates the average quantity of each product sold per month in the year 2022. It starts by extracting the month from the transaction_date. It groups all the records by the month and the product_id, then calculates the average quantity for each group by using the AVG function. The WHERE clause filters the data to only include sales from the year 2022. Finally, it orders the output by month and then product_id.

To practice a very similar question try this interactive Amazon Average Review Ratings Question which is similar for requiring monthly average calculations or this Wayfair Y-on-Y Growth Rate Question which is similar for needing to analyze sales data.

SQL Question 5: What is the process for finding records in one table that do not exist in another?

To find records in one table that aren't in another, you can use a and check for values in the right-side table.

Here is an example using two tables, Texas Instruments employees and Texas Instruments managers:

This will return all rows from Texas Instruments employees where there is no matching row in managers based on the column.

You can also use the operator in PostgreSQL and Microsoft SQL Server to return the records that are in the first table but not in the second. Here is an example:

This will retrieve all rows from employees that do not appear in managers. The operator works by retreivingthe rows that are returned by the first query, but not by the second.

Please note that is not supported by all DBMS systems, such as MySQL and Oracle (however, you can use the operator to achieve a similar outcome).

SQL Question 6: Average Monthly Sales of Each Product

Imagine you are working as a data analyst at Texas Instruments. Your team is interested to know the average sales for each product, on a monthly basis, to assess performance and make future forecasts.

For this purpose, you have been given access to a table that stores all sales transactions. The table has the following structure and sample data:

Example Input:

Your task is to write an SQL query that returns a table showing the average quantity of each product sold in each month. The result table should include columns for the month, the product, and the average quantity sold.

Answer:

This SQL query first extracts the month from the using the function. It then groups the data by both month and product_id. The function calculates the average quantity sold for each product each month. Finally, the clause sorts the result first by month (ascending) and then by average quantity sold (descending), so you can easily see which products had the highest average sales in each month.

SQL Question 7: What sets the 'BETWEEN' and 'IN' operators apart?

While both the and operators are used to filter data based on some criteria, selects for values within a given range, whereas for it checks if the value is in a given list of values.

For example, say you had a table called , which had the salary of the employee, along with the country in which they reside.

To find all employees who made between $80k and$120k, you could use the operator:

To find all employees that reside in the US or Canada, you could use the operator:

SQL Question 8: Joining and Analyzing Customer and Product Tables

Consider a scenario at Texas Instruments where you have access to two tables: Customers and Invoices.

The Customers table contains information about the customers such as customer id and the customer's name. The Invoices table contains invoice id, customer id (who the inventory is sold to), the product id, and the price.

Your task is to write a SQL query that combines these two tables to return the total amount that each customer has spent on products.

The returned result should be sorted by the total amount in descending order.

Example Input:

Example Input:

Answer:

This query uses an INNER JOIN to combine the Customers and Invoices tables based on the customer_id. It then groups the results by the customer’s name and calculates the total amount spent by each customer by adding up the price of all their purchases. Finally, it sorts the results in descending order of the total amount spent. This can be useful for the company to identify their highest spending customers.

Since joins come up so often during SQL interviews, try an interactive SQL join question from Spotify:

SQL Question 9: Total sales per quarter for a specific product

As a data analyst at Texas Instruments, your task is to identify the total sales per quarter for a given year for a specific product. You are given a table with , and fields.

Use the following sales table as sample data:

Sample Input:

Here, a quarter (Q1-Q4) is defined as:

• Q1: January through March,
• Q2: April through June,
• Q3: July through September,
• Q4: October through December.

Answer:

Assuming we want the total sales quantity per quarter for product 001, we can use the PostgreSQL function to round down our date to the nearest quarter.

To calculate the quantity sold for product 001 in each quarter, we use the following SQL query:

This PostgreSQL query will provide a table with the quarters (every three months starting from January) as rows and the total quantity sold in that quarter as columns. It groups the sales quantities by the quarter in which they were made and only takes records into account where the is '001'.

Texas Instruments SQL Interview Tips

The best way to prepare for a Texas Instruments SQL interview is to practice, practice, practice. Beyond just solving the above Texas Instruments SQL interview questions, you should also solve the 200+ SQL Interview Questions on DataLemur which come from companies like Microsoft, Google, and Facebook.

Each exercise has multiple hints, step-by-step solutions and crucially, there's an online SQL coding environment so you can easily right in the browser your query and have it graded.

To prep for the Texas Instruments SQL interview you can also be useful to practice interview questions from other semiconductor companies like:

• NXP Semiconductors SQL questions
• STMicroelectronics SQL questions
• Analog Devices SQL questions
• Infineon SQL questions

But if your SQL foundations are weak, don't worry about jumping right into solving questions – strengthen your SQL foundations with this SQL tutorial for Data Scientists & Analysts.

This tutorial covers SQL concepts such as Subquery vs. CTE and sorting data with ORDER BY – both of these show up often in Texas Instruments SQL assessments.

Texas Instruments Data Science Interview Tips

What Do Texas Instruments Data Science Interviews Cover?

For the Texas Instruments Data Science Interview, beyond writing SQL queries, the other types of questions which are covered:

• Statistics and Probability Questions
• Python or R Coding Questions
• Business Sense and Product-Sense Questions
• ML Modelling Questions
• Behavioral Based Interview Questions

How To Prepare for Texas Instruments Data Science Interviews?

To prepare for Texas Instruments Data Science interviews read the book Ace the Data Science Interview because it's got:

• 201 interview questions taken from FAANG & startups
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