11 Veeva SQL Interview Questions (Updated 2024)
At Veeva Systems, SQL is used quite frequently for analyzing large volumes of healthcare data and for supporting their OpenData initatives. Unsurprisingly this is why Veeva LOVES to ask SQL query questions in interviews for Data Science and Data Engineering positions.
As such, to help you ace the Veeva SQL interview, we've collected 11 Veeva Systems SQL interview questions – can you solve them?
11 Veeva Systems SQL Interview Questions
SQL Question 1: Identify Power Users in Veeva
Veeva is a cloud-computing company focused on pharmaceutical and life sciences industry applications. Given the nature of the business, let's say a user (healthcare professionals or companies) is regarded as a 'Power User' if they have requested more than 50 medical documents in any given month. Write a SQL query to identify these power users.
Sample Data:
Example Input:
Example Output:
Answer:
In this query, it uses the function to get the month part of the date. Then it groups the data by month and user_id after which it counts the number of document requests per these grouped fields. After doing this the clause is used to filter these groups to include just the users who made over 50 document requests in any given month. These users are considered 'Power Users'.
To practice a similar power-user data analysis problem question on DataLemur's free online SQL coding environment, try this recently asked Microsoft SQL interview question:
SQL Question 2: Analyzing Product Reviews over Time
For a company like Veeva, that builds cloud-based applications for the global life sciences industry, it is critical to track customer feedback about their various products over time. As an interview question, you might be asked:
You are given a table called that stores product reviews submitted by users. Write a SQL query to compute the running average of stars received by each product, month over month.
Example Input:
| review_id | user_id | submit_date | product_id | stars |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 6171 | 123 | 2022-06-08 | 50001 | 4 |
| 7802 | 265 | 2022-06-10 | 69852 | 4 |
| 5293 | 362 | 2022-06-18 | 50001 | 3 |
| 6352 | 192 | 2022-07-26 | 69852 | 3 |
| 4517 | 981 | 2022-07-05 | 69852 | 2 |
Example Output:
| mth | product | avg_stars |
|---|---|---|
| 6 | 50001 | 3.50 |
| 6 | 69852 | 4.00 |
| 7 | 69852 | 2.50 |
Answer:
This SQL query uses the window function to compute the running average of stars received by each product, partitioned by and ordered by the month () of . The expression means that each average calculation includes all preceding rows (i.e., all previous months) and the current row for the specific product.
To practice another window function question on DataLemur's free online SQL coding environment, try this Google SQL Interview Question:
SQL Question 3: Can you describe the difference between a correlated and a non-correlated sub-query?
A correlated sub-query is one that is linked to the outer query and cannot be executed on its own. It uses the outer query to filter or transform data by referencing a column from the outer query, while the outer query uses the results of the inner query. On the other hand, a non-correlated sub-query is independent of the outer query and can be executed on its own. It does not reference any columns from the outer query and is used to retrieve additional data for the outer query.
Correlated sub-queries are slower to execute, as they have to be re-evaluated for each row of the outer query, while non-correlated sub-queries are faster, as they only have to be executed once.
SQL Question 4: Veeva Client-Health specific database design
Veeva is a cloud-computing company focused on pharmaceutical and life sciences industry applications. One of their products is a clinical trial management system. Imagine you've been assigned a task to design a database that tracks all clinical trials for a pharmaceutical company.
The requirements are:
- For each clinical trial, we need to store its ID, name, start date, end date, and the drug being tested.
- For each drug, we need to store its ID, name, and description.
- Each clinical trial can be in multiple phases at different times. A phase can be one of the following: Preclinical, Phase I, Phase II, Phase III, Submitted for Approval, and Approved. For each phase, we must store a start and end date.
Write a PostgreSQL query that returns all clinical trials, their associated drug, the phases those trials have gone through, and the start and end date of each phase.
Example Input:
| trial_id | trial_name | start_date | end_date | drug_id |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 'Trial A' | '2020-01-01' | '2023-01-01' | 1 |
| 2 | 'Trial B' | '2020-04-01' | '2023-04-01' | 2 |
Example Input:
| drug_id | drug_name | description |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 'Drug A' | 'Analgesic' |
| 2 | 'Drug B' | 'Antibiotic' |
Example Input:
| trial_id | phase | start_date | end_date |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 'Preclinical' | '2020-01-01' | '2020-06-01' |
| 1 | 'Phase I' | '2020-06-02' | '2021-01-01' |
| 2 | 'Phase II' | '2020-04-01' | '2021-04-01' |
Answer:
This query joins the , , and tables on their common ID fields. It then selects the columns which return the trial and drug details, along with the phase and its respective start and end dates.
SQL Question 5: How is the constraint used in a database?
A is a column or set of columns in a table that references the primary key of another table. It is used to link the two tables together, and to ensure that the data in the foreign key column is valid.
The constraint helps to ensure the integrity of the data in the database by preventing the insertion of rows in the foreign key table that do not have corresponding entries in the primary key table. It also helps to enforce the relationship between the two tables, and can be used to ensure that data is not deleted from the primary key table if there are still references to it in the foreign key table.
For example, if you have a table of Veeva customers and an orders table, the customer_id column in the orders table could be a that references the id column (which is the primary key) in the Veeva customers table.
SQL Question 6: Filter Customers Based on Product Preferences and Region
Veeva is a leading provider of industry-specific cloud solutions for the life sciences industry. Their customer records database contains specific data about the pharmaceutical companies, they serve as customers and the products these companies have purchased.
See below for sample tables. Your task is to write a query that filters customers who have purchased either 'Product_A' or 'Product_B', and are located either in the 'West' or 'North' region.
Example Input:
Example Input:
Answer:
Assuming that the 'purchases' table has a foreign key 'customer_id' referencing 'customer_id' of the 'customer' table, you can write a SQL query using the WHERE and OR commands:
This query first joins the 'customer' and 'purchases' tables on the 'customer_id' field. It then filters the joined table for customers who have purchased 'Product_A' or 'Product_B' and are located in the 'West' or 'North' regions.
Possible result could look like below:
| customer_name | region | product_name |
|---|---|---|
| ABC Pharmaceuticals | North | Product_A |
| LMN Pharmaceuticals | West | Product_A |
SQL Question 7: Could you describe a self-join and provide a scenario in which it would be used?
A self-join is a type of JOIN where a table is joined to itself. To execute a self-join, you must include the table name twice in the FROM clause and assign a different alias to each instance. You can then join the two copies of the table using a JOIN clause, and use a WHERE clause to specify the relationship between the rows.
For instance, suppose you had website visitor data for Veeva, exported from the company's Google Analytics account. To assist the web-dev team, you needed to analyze pairs of pages for UX or navigational issues. As part of that analysis, you wanted to generate all pairs of URLs, but needed to exclude pairs where both URLs were the same since that is not a valid pair."
You could use the following self-join:
This query returns the url of each page () along with the url of the page that referred to it (). The self-join is performed using the field, which specifies the id of the page that referred the visitor to the current page, and avoids any pages that referred themself (aka data anomalies).
SQL Question 8: Calculate the Average Monthly Sales Revenue per Product
Veeva is a company that's operating in the life sciences industry offering products like CRM, content management, and data management solutions. Imagine you are a data analyst at Veeva. You have been tasked to analyze the monthly sales of each product and understand revenue trends.
Given a table, which contains sales data containing columns: , , , and . Write a SQL query to find the average monthly sales revenue for each product.
Example Input:
| sale_id | product_id | sale_date | sale_price |
|---|---|---|---|
| 101 | 8001 | 03/01/2022 00:00:00 | 11000 |
| 202 | 9052 | 03/05/2022 00:00:00 | 25000 |
| 310 | 8001 | 04/18/2022 00:00:00 | 14000 |
| 415 | 9052 | 04/26/2022 00:00:00 | 26000 |
| 512 | 8001 | 05/22/2022 00:00:00 | 15000 |
| 627 | 9052 | 06/28/2022 00:00:00 | 28000 |
Example Output:
| month | product_id | average_sale_price |
|---|---|---|
| 3 | 8001 | 11000.00 |
| 3 | 9052 | 25000.00 |
| 4 | 8001 | 14000.00 |
| 4 | 9052 | 26000.00 |
| 5 | 8001 | 15000.00 |
| 6 | 9052 | 28000.00 |
Answer:
This SQL query first extracts the month from the by using the EXTRACT function. Then, it calculates the average for each product id () for each month. The GROUP BY statement is used to group the results by the month and product id, and the results are ordered by the month and product id for easier viewing.
SQL Question 9: Find all customer records with timezone having 'EST'
As an international company, Veeva has customers in multiple timezones. For this question, you've been asked to find all the customers who are in the 'EST' timezone.
Create a SQL query that will return all records from the customers table where the 'timezone' field matches the value '%EST%'.
Example Input:
Answer:
This query uses the SQL LIKE operator, which helps in matching the string pattern. The '%' sign is used in the LIKE operator to define wildcards (missing letters in the pattern). This query will return all customers who are in the 'EST' timezone.
SQL Question 10: What's the main difference between ‘BETWEEN’ and ‘IN’ operators?
The operator is used to select rows that fall within a certain range of values, while the operator is used to select rows that match values in a specified list.
For example, suppose you are a data analyst at Veeva and have a table of advertising campaign data. To find campaigns with a spend between 5k, you could use BETWEEN:
To find advertising campaigns that were video and image based (as opposed to text or billboard ads), you could use the operator:
SQL Question 11: Find the number of customers from each city who bought a particular product
In the customer database of the company Veeva, there are two key tables '' and ''. The '' table contains details about the customers, including their and . The '' table contains sales transaction data, including the , and . Your task is to write a SQL query to find out the number of customers from each city who bought the product with 'P001'.
Example Input:
| customer_id | name | city |
|---|---|---|
| C001 | Amit | Delhi |
| C002 | Rajesh | Bangalore |
| C003 | Seema | Mumbai |
| C004 | Amit | Mumbai |
| C005 | Sarita | Delhi |
| C006 | Rajesh | Delhi |
Example Input:
| sales_id | customer_id | product_id |
|---|---|---|
| S001 | C001 | P001 |
| S002 | C002 | P001 |
| S003 | C003 | P001 |
| S004 | C004 | P002 |
| S005 | C005 | P001 |
| S006 | C006 | P002 |
Answer:
With above query, we first join the and tables using . We then filter the data for the product with 'P001'. Finally we group by and count the to get the number of customers from each city who bought product 'P001'. Note: In actual scenario, city names can have different case letters (like 'Delhi' and 'delhi'), you may want to convert everything to lower case before grouping for accurate counts.
Because joins come up frequently during SQL interviews, try this interactive Snapchat JOIN SQL interview question:
Veeva SQL Interview Tips
The best way to prepare for a SQL interview, besides making sure you have strong SQL fundamentals, is to practice a ton of real SQL questions that were asked in recent job interviews.
Besides solving the above Veeva SQL interview questions, you should also solve the 200+ SQL coding questions which come from companies like FAANG (FB, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google).
Each SQL question has multiple hints, fully explained answers along with a discussion board to see how others solved it and crucially, there is an online SQL coding environment so you can easily right in the browser your SQL query and have it executed.
To prep for the Veeva SQL interview it is also helpful to practice SQL problems from other tech companies like:
But if your SQL coding skills are weak, don't worry about jumping right into solving questions – improve your SQL foundations with this DataLemur SQL Tutorial.
This tutorial covers topics including how window functions work and sorting results with ORDER BY – both of these show up frequently during SQL job interviews at Veeva.
Veeva Systems Data Science Interview Tips
What Do Veeva Data Science Interviews Cover?
In addition to SQL query questions, the other types of questions tested in the Veeva Data Science Interview are:
- Stats Interview Questions
- Python Pandas or R Coding Questions
- Product-Sense and Business Case Questions
- ML Modelling Questions
- Behavioral Based Interview Questions
How To Prepare for Veeva Data Science Interviews?
To prepare for Veeva Data Science interviews read the book Ace the Data Science Interview because it's got:
- 201 interview questions taken from companies like Microsoft, Google & Amazon
- a refresher covering SQL, AB Testing & ML
- over 900+ reviews on Amazon & 4.5-star rating