Top SQL Questions Asked in any data interview with Satyam Gupta

A focused prep guide built from the SQL questions that keep showing up in real data analytics interviews - second highest salary, running totals, window functions, self-joins, cohort retention, gap detection, and many more.

Each question comes in three parts:

1. The question itself, phrased the way an interviewer would ask it
2. What to think - the reasoning cues that help you spot the right SQL pattern on your own, before seeing the answer
3. The solution - clean, commented SQL you can run and adapt

This isn't a list of answers to memorize. It's built to train the instinct for matching a problem shape (ranking, gaps, streaks, pivoting, retention) to the right SQL tool, since interviewers usually swap the table and column names but reuse the same underlying pattern.

Good fit for anyone prepping for data analyst, data scientist, or BI interviews who wants to go in with pattern recognition, not just memorized queries.