8 VMware SQL Interview Questions (Updated 2024)
At VMware, SQL is used all the damn time for analyzing and reporting on virtualization data, and managing databases within the cloud infrastructure services. That's why VMware almost always asks SQL coding questions during interviews for Data Science and Data Engineering positions.
So, if you're trying to prepare for the SQL Interview, here’s 8 VMware SQL interview questions to practice, which are similar to commonly asked questions at VMware – how many can you solve?
8 VMware SQL Interview Questions
SQL Question 1: Analyzing VMware Product Version Usage
As a VMware system administrator, you want to understand the usage of different product versions in your company. You have the following two tables:
Example Input:
| product_id | product_name | version |
|---|---|---|
| 101 | VMware vSphere | 6.7 |
| 102 | VMware vSphere | 7.0 |
| 103 | VMware NSX-T | 2.4 |
| 104 | VMware NSX-T | 2.5 |
Example Input:
| device_id | product_id | usage_date |
|---|---|---|
| d001 | 101 | 2022-10-04 |
| d002 | 102 | 2022-10-05 |
| d003 | 102 | 2022-10-06 |
| d004 | 103 | 2022-10-07 |
| d005 | 104 | 2022-10-08 |
Your task is to write a SQL query to list the product name, version and the number of unique devices that used each product version in each month (for all the records in ).
Answer:
This query uses the function to get the first day of the month for each usage date. It then groups by the truncated date, product name, and version, and it counts the number of unique device IDs for each group. The output will show you the number of unique devices that used each product version in each month.
To solve another question about calculating rates, try this TikTok SQL Interview Question within DataLemur's interactive coding environment:
SQL Question 2: VMWare Product User Analysis
As a data analyst at VMWare, you are presented with two data tables. One table, , contains information about the users of VMware products, including columns for , , and . The other table, , contains information about each instance of product use, including columns for , , , , and .
You are asked to help understand the company's user base and their product usage. Specifically, you are tasked to identify users who have used the product 'vSphere' version '7.0' more than 10 times since '2021-01-01'.
Provide a list of s who meet these criteria and sort the output based on in ascending alphanumeric order.
Example Input:
| user_id | user_name | registration_date |
|---|---|---|
| 1001 | user1 | 05/10/2020 |
| 1002 | user2 | 06/12/2020 |
| 1003 | user3 | 08/24/2020 |
| 1004 | user4 | 11/10/2020 |
| 1005 | user5 | 01/01/2021 |
Example Input:
| usage_id | user_id | product_name | product_version | usage_date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1001 | vSphere | 7.0 | 01/10/2021 |
| 2 | 1001 | vSphere | 7.0 | 05/10/2021 |
| 3 | 1001 | vSphere | 7.0 | 06/20/2021 |
| 4 | 1002 | vSphere | 6.7 | 07/24/2021 |
| 5 | 1001 | vSphere | 7.0 | 08/30/2021 |
| 6 | 1003 | vSphere | 7.0 | 09/28/2021 |
| 7 | 1003 | vSphere | 7.0 | 10/04/2021 |
| 8 | 1001 | vSphere | 7.0 | 01/20/2022 |
| 9 | 1003 | vSphere | 7.0 | 05/01/2022 |
| 10 | 1001 | vSphere | 7.0 | 06/01/2022 |
Answer:
This query starts by creating a subquery to find users who have used vSphere 7.0 more than 10 times since 2021-01-01. This subquery is then joined to the table to obtain the associated with the and results are sorted in ascending alphanumeric order.
To solve another question about calculating rates, solve this TikTok SQL Interview Question on DataLemur's interactive SQL code editor:
SQL Question 3: What does adding 'DISTINCT' to a SQL query do?
The keyword added to a statement can be used to get records without duplicates.
For example, say you had a table of VMware customers:
| name | city |
|---|---|
| Akash | SF |
| Brittany | NYC |
| Carlos | NYC |
| Diego | Seattle |
| Eva | SF |
| Faye | Seattle |
Suppose you wanted to figure out which cities the customers lived in, but didn't want duplicate results, you could write a query like this:
Your result would be:
| city |
|---|
| SF |
| NYC |
| Seattle |
SQL Question 4: Filter Customers by Subscription and Usage
Given a database with two tables and , filter out the customers who have an 'Enterprise' level subscription and have used more than 1000 resources.
The 'customers' table has the fields 'customer_id', 'subscription_level' and 'country', and the 'usage' table has the fields 'customer_id', 'resources_used' and 'usage_date'. Each row in the usage table represents the usage for a particular day.
Tables Structure
Example Input:
| customer_id | subscription_level | country |
|---|---|---|
| 101 | Enterprise | USA |
| 102 | Basic | Canada |
| 103 | Enterprise | Germany |
| 104 | Free | USA |
| 105 | Enterprise | USA |
Example Input:
| customer_id | resources_used | usage_date |
|---|---|---|
| 101 | 1023 | 06/08/2022 |
| 103 | 832 | 06/10/2022 |
| 101 | 765 | 06/11/2022 |
| 105 | 1204 | 06/14/2022 |
| 104 | 1095 | 06/15/2022 |
You need to return a list of customer_ids and countries of customers who meet these conditions.
Answer:
This SQL statement will first the 'customers' and 'usage' tables where the 'customer_id' fields match. It then only returns the rows where the 'subscription_level' field is 'Enterprise' and the 'resources_used' field is more than 1000. The returned columns are 'customer_id' and 'country' from the 'customers' table.
To solve a related SQL problem on DataLemur's free interactive coding environment, attempt this Meta SQL interview question:
SQL Question 5: Can you provide a comparison of cross join and natural join?
A cross join is a JOIN operation in SQL that creates a new table by pairing each row from the first table with every row from the second table. It is also referred to as a cartesian join. In contrast, a natural join combines rows from two or more tables based on their common columns, forming a new table. Natural joins are called "natural" because they rely on the natural relationship between the common columns in the joined tables.
Here's an example of a cross join:
Here's a natural join example using two tables, VMware employees and VMware managers:
This natural join returns all rows from VMware employees where there is no matching row in managers based on the column.
One significant difference between cross joins and natural joins is that the former do not require common columns between the tables being joined, while the latter do. Another distinction is that cross joins can generate very large tables if the input tables have a large number of rows, while natural joins only produce a table with the number of rows equal to the number of matching rows in the input tables.
SQL Question 6: Average Purchase Amount per Month for Each Product
As a data analyst at VMware, your task is to calculate the average purchase amount per month for each product we sell. This will help the product management team to understand how the sales of each product are distributed over time.
The table records every purchase made by a user. Assume that each row represents a separate purchase of a VMware product, the is in US dollars, and the is of the format
Example Input:
| purchase_id | user_id | purchase_date | product_id | purchase_amount |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 105 | 123 | 03/15/2022 16:30:00 | 10001 | 95.50 |
| 210 | 265 | 03/28/2022 10:45:00 | 10552 | 120.00 |
| 345 | 362 | 04/05/2022 18:00:00 | 10001 | 105.00 |
| 124 | 192 | 05/17/2022 14:00:00 | 10552 | 115.00 |
| 675 | 981 | 06/30/2022 09:00:00 | 10552 | 125.00 |
We want the output to look like below, where corresponds to the month, is the , and is the average purchase amount for that product in that month.
Example Output:
| mth | product | avg_purchase_amount |
|---|---|---|
| 3 | 10001 | 95.50 |
| 3 | 10552 | 120.00 |
| 4 | 10001 | 105.00 |
| 5 | 10552 | 115.00 |
| 6 | 10552 | 125.00 |
Answer:
This query groups the table by month and product_id, then calculates the average purchase amount for each group. The output is ordered by and for easy interpretation of results.
To solve another question about calculating rates, try this TikTok SQL Interview Question within DataLemur's interactive coding environment:
SQL Question 7: Do NULLs in SQL mean the same thing as a zero?
In SQL, zero's are numerical values which can be used in calculations and comparisons just like any other number. A blank space, also known as an empty string, is a character value and can be used in character manipulation functions and comparisons.
NULLs aren't the same as zero's or blank spaces. NULLs represent unkonwn, missing, or not applicable values. They are not included in calculations and comparisons involving NULL values always result in NULL.
SQL Question 8: Analyze Product Usage Based on Customer Subscriptions
Given two tables, and , write a SQL query to analyze the product usage of VMware's customers. The table includes information about the customer with their respective , , , and . The table contains columns , , , and .
The goal is to find how many customers are using each product right now, i.e., their subscription end date is later than today's date. Output should show the and the count of using that product.
Example Input:
| customer_id | customer_name | contact_no | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 123 | Jane Smith | 9876543210 | j.smith@example.com |
| 456 | John Doe | 9876543211 | j.doe@example.com |
| 789 | Emily Walker | 9876543212 | e.walker@example.com |
| 321 | Ravi Kumar | 9876543213 | r.kumar@example.com |
| 654 | Lee Wong | 9876543214 | l.wong@example.com |
Example Input:
| subscription_id | customer_id | product_id | start_date | end_date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 123 | 1 | 2022-01-07 | 2023-01-07 |
| 2 | 456 | 2 | 2022-06-09 | 2023-06-09 |
| 3 | 123 | 2 | 2022-07-10 | 2023-07-10 |
| 4 | 789 | 1 | 2021-12-17 | 2022-12-17 |
| 5 | 321 | 3 | 2022-08-16 | 2023-08-16 |
| 6 | 654 | 1 | 2022-07-01 | 2023-07-01 |
| 7 | 789 | 3 | 2022-04-22 | 2023-04-22 |
Answer:
This query filters out the active subscriptions using the clause. It then groups these by forming groups of customers using each product. The function is then applied to each of these groups to get the number of customers. The results are ordered by the count of customers in descending order. In contexts where the current date differs, use the relevant date function of the SQL variant in use.
To practice a similar SQL interview question on DataLemur's free interactive SQL code editor, try this Facebook SQL Interview question:
VMware SQL Interview Tips
The best way to prepare for a VMware SQL interview is to practice, practice, practice.
In addition to solving the earlier VMware SQL interview questions, you should also solve the 200+ FAANG SQL Questions on DataLemur which come from companies like Netflix, Airbnb, and Amazon.
Each problem on DataLemur has multiple hints, step-by-step solutions and crucially, there is an interactive SQL code editor so you can easily right in the browser your query and have it graded.
To prep for the VMware SQL interview you can also be a great idea to practice SQL problems from other tech companies like:
However, if your SQL coding skills are weak, don't worry about diving straight into solving questions – improve your SQL foundations with this SQL tutorial for Data Scientists & Analysts.
This tutorial covers things like window functions and filtering groups with HAVING – both of these come up routinely during VMware SQL assesments.
VMware Data Science Interview Tips
What Do VMware Data Science Interviews Cover?
For the VMware Data Science Interview, besides SQL questions, the other types of questions to prepare for are:
- Statistics and Probability Questions
- Coding Questions in Python or R
- Business Sense and Product-Sense Questions
- Machine Learning Questions
- Behavioral Interview Questions
How To Prepare for VMware Data Science Interviews?
The best way to prepare for VMware Data Science interviews is by reading Ace the Data Science Interview. The book's got:
- 201 Interview Questions from companies like Microsoft, Google & Amazon
- A Crash Course covering SQL, Product-Sense & ML
- Amazing Reviews (900+ 5-star reviews on Amazon)