20 SQL Practice Problems for Beginner and Intermediate Users

Want to become an SQL expert? Try solving those 20 SQL practice problems!

Whether you're just starting your SQL journey or preparing for exams, you need to sharpen your SQL skills if you want to become an expert. And you know what people say: practice makes perfect!

Like most skills, SQL is best learned through experience; practicing SQL allows you to apply your knowledge to real-world scenarios. Through repeated practice, you'll gain the confidence to dive into complex SQL tasks and excel in both academic and professional fields.

In this article, I have selected 20 SQL practice problems from beginner- and intermediate-level LearnSQL.com courses. These exercises cover fundamental to more advanced concepts, giving you a gradual progression towards becoming a proficient SQL user. Each exercise includes clear explanations and a solution.

Many exercises in this article are inspired by our popular SQL Practice track. Its 9 courses and more than 1,100 coding exercises will seriously challenge you! If you want more SQL ‘exercise’ after finishing this article, I recommend you head over there.

Are you ready? Let’s get started! Try to solve each problem before you read the solution.

20 SQL Practice Problems with Solutions

Before you start, you may want to download or bookmark our free SQL Basics Cheat Sheet. It summarizes the basic concepts of SQL and will probably come in handy.

For the following practice problems, I will use a scenario that we all know: a store. Here is the diagram of the database:

As you can see, the store database has 6 tables:

The customer table contains information about the customers. It has the following columns:

• customer_id: The customer’s unique internal ID.
• contact_name: The customer’s full name.
• company_name: The name of the customer’s company.
• contact_email: The customer’s email address.
• address: The customer’s street address.
• city: The city where the customer lives.
• country: The country where the customer lives.

The product table contains a list of products available in the store. Its columns are:

• product_id: The product’s ID.
• product_name: The product’s name.
• category_id: The ID of the product's category. This connects with the category
• quantity_per_unit: The quantity of product items in one unit.
• unit_price: The price of the product.
• units_in_stock: The number of the available units of the product.
• discontinued: Whether the product is available in the store (a FALSE value) or has been discontinued (TRUE).

The category table contains information about the categories of the products:

• category_id: The ID of the category.
• name: The category name.
• description: A description of the category.
• parent_category_id: If this category is a subcategory, this points to the parent category. Otherwise, this column will be NULL.

The purchase table contains information about each order:

• purchase_id: The ID of that purchase.
• customer_id: The ID of the customer who made the purchase.
• employee_id: The ID of the employee who took care of the order.
• total_price: The total price of the order.
• purchase_date: The timestamp when the order was received.
• shipped_date: The timestamp when the order was shipped.
• ship_address: The street address to which the order was shipped.
• ship_city: The city to which the order was shipped.
• ship_country: The country to which the order was shipped.

The purchase_item table connects purchases with products. It has the following mandatory columns:

• purchase_id: The purchase ID.
• product_id: The ID of the purchased product.
• unit_price: The price of one unit of that product.
• quantity: The number of purchased units of that product.

The employee table stores information about store employees. It has the following columns:

• employee_id: The ID of the employee.
• last_name: The employee’s last name.
• first_name: The employee’s first name.
• birth_date: The employee’s date of birth.
• address: The employee's street address.
• city: The employee's city.
• country: The employee's country.
• reports_to: The ID of that employee’s direct supervisor. It's NULL if the employee doesn't report to anyone.

Exercise 1: Select All Columns

Exercise

Display all data in the product table.

Solution

SELECT *
FROM product;

Explanation

In this query, the SELECT clause is used to specify the columns that we want to retrieve from the table product. In this case, the asterisk (*) is shorthand for “all columns”. The FROM clause specifies the table from which the data is to be retrieved. In this query, it's the product table.

Putting it all together, the query is essentially asking the database to return all columns for every row in the product table.

Exercise 2: Select Multiple Columns

Exercise

Display the names and email addresses of the customers. You'll find the name in the contact_name column and the email in the contact_email column. Rename the columns to name and email.

Solution

SELECT
  contact_name AS name,
  contact_email AS email
FROM customer;

Explanation

In this query, the SELECT clause is used to specify the columns that we want to retrieve from the table customer. Note that the columns are separated by commas.

Then, we use the AS keyword to rename the column contact_name to name and contact_email to email. These new names are called “aliases”.

As previously, the FROM clause is used to indicate the table from which the data is going to be retrieved; here, customer.

Putting it all together, the query asks the database to retrieve the contact_name and contact_email columns from the customer table. It also asks it to display these columns as name and email, respectively. The result set will consist of these two aliased columns for each row in the customer table.

Exercise 3: Select Distinct Values From a Table

Exercise

Display the IDs of all customers who made at least one purchase. No duplicated customer IDs should be shown.

Solution

SELECT DISTINCT customer_id
FROM purchase;

Explanation

Since we want to retrieve customers who’ve made a purchase, we select their IDs from the table that stores purchase data, purchase. The SELECT clause combined with DISTINCT removes any duplicate customer_id values from the result set.

Exercise 4: Select Columns Using WHERE

Exercise

Display all data for a customer with ID 4.

Solution

SELECT *
FROM customer
WHERE customer_id = 4;

Explanation

This query retrieves all columns (* represents all columns) from the customer table – but only where the value in the customer_id column is equal to 4.

The WHERE clause filters the rows to include only those that match the stated condition – here, that the value in the customer_id column is equal to 4. The = operator is used for equality comparison. The result set will include all columns of the rows that meet this condition.

Exercise 5: Select Columns Using WHERE with Text

Exercise

Display the names of all customers living in Dallas.

Solution

SELECT contact_name
FROM customer
WHERE city = 'Dallas';

Explanation

This query retrieves all columns (*) from the customer table. The WHERE clause filters the rows to include only those where the value in the city column is equal to 'Dallas'. 'Dallas' is a string value, so it's enclosed in single quotes.

Exercise 6: Select Columns Using WHERE and LIKE

Exercise

Display all data for products whose names start with 'Beef'.

Solution

SELECT *
FROM product
WHERE product_name LIKE 'Beef%';

Explanation

The WHERE condition filters the rows to include only those where the value in the product_name column starts with 'Beef'. The LIKE operator is used for pattern matching: 'Beef%' is a pattern where 'Beef' is the start of the pattern and '%' is a wildcard that matches any sequence of characters following 'Beef'.

Note that the LIKE operator is case sensitive; values that start with ‘beef’ or ‘BEEF’ will not be included in the results.

Exercise 7: Select Columns Using WHERE and <>

Exercise

Display product names and the related category IDs for categories with any ID other than 1 (Food).

Solution

SELECT 
  product_name, 
  category_id
FROM product
WHERE category_id <> 1;

Explanation

This query retrieves specific columns (product_name and category_id) from the product table where the value in the category_id column is different from 1. The <> operator is the opposite of the = operator; it returns only values that do not match the condition.

Exercise 8: Select Columns Using WHERE and a Logical Operator

Exercise

Display the names of all customers whose company name is Oloo or Fliptune.

Solution

SELECT
  contact_name
FROM customer
WHERE company_name = 'Oloo'
  OR company_name = 'Fliptune';

Explanation

This query retrieves the customers’ names from the customer table where the value in the company_name column is equal to 'Oloo' or 'Fliptune'. The OR operator is used to combine these conditions, indicating that one of them must be true for a row to be included in the result set.

Exercise 9: Select Columns Using WHERE, OR, and AND

Exercise

Display data for all products in the category with the ID of 1 (Food) or 5 (Fruits and vegetables) and with a unit price above 3.5.

Solution

SELECT *
FROM product
WHERE (category_id = 1 OR category_id = 5)
  AND unit_price > 3.5;

Explanation

This query retrieves all columns from the product table where the value in the category_id column is equal to 1 or 5, and the value in the unit_price column is greater than 3.5. The logical operators OR and AND are used to combine these conditions. Note that the OR conditions are surrounded by parentheses to tell SQL to execute this block first.

Exercise 10: Select Columns Using WHERE and NOT

Exercise

Display the name of all products except for non-discontinued products belonging to category ID 3.

Solution

SELECT product_name
FROM product
WHERE NOT (discontinued IS TRUE AND category_id = 3);

Explanation

This query retrieves all columns from the product table except those where the value in the category_id column is equal to 3, and the logical value in the discontinued column is TRUE. The NOT keyword negates the condition surrounded by parentheses, meaning it selects rows where discontinued and category_id is anything other than TRUE and 3.

Exercise 11: Order Query Results with ORDER BY

Exercise

Display all data for purchases ordered by shipping date. Purchases with more recent shipping dates must be displayed first.

Solution

SELECT 
  purchase_id, 
  total_price, 
  shipped_date
FROM purchase
ORDER BY shipped_date DESC;

Explanation

This query retrieves the purchase_id, total_price, and purchase_date columns from the purchase table and orders the result set based on the shipped_date column in descending order. The ORDER BY clause orders the result set based on the values in the shipped_date column. The DESC keyword stands for "descending", which means the result set will be sorted in descending order (from the most recent dates to the earliest dates).

Exercise 12: Select and Filter Columns and Order Results

Exercise

Display all data for purchases with a total price greater than or equal to 10. Purchases with the most recent shipping dates must be displayed first.

Solution

SELECT *
FROM purchase
WHERE total_price >= 10
ORDER BY shipped_date DESC;

Explanation

This query retrieves all columns from the purchase table where the value in the total_price column is greater than or equal to 10. It also orders the result set based on the shipped_date column in descending order (DESC). The WHERE condition filters the rows to include only those where the value in the total_price column is greater than or equal to 10.

Exercise 13: Group Columns and COUNT()

Exercise

Display all category IDs and the number of products in that category.

Solution

SELECT category_id, COUNT(*)
FROM product
GROUP BY category_id;

Explanation

This query retrieves the count of products in each category in the product table. The SELECT clause specifies that we want to retrieve the category_id column and the count of occurrences of each distinct category_id (the aggregate function COUNT(*)).

Finally, the GROUP BY clause groups the results based on the values in the category_id column. It ensures that the count is calculated for each unique category_id.

Exercise 14: Group Columns and Find the Average

Exercise

For all customers, display the customer ID and the average price of all purchases for that customer.

Solution

SELECT 
  customer_id, 
  AVG(total_price)
FROM purchase
GROUP BY customer_id;

Explanation

This query is similar to the previous exercise – but this time, we use the aggregate function AVG() to display the average of the purchases for each customer. The SELECT clause returns the customer_id column and the average of the total_price for each distinct customer_id in the purchase table.

Exercise 15: GROUP BY Multiple Columns

Exercise

For each customer–employee pair, find the total price of purchases made by this customer and handled by this employee. Display three columns: customer_id, employee_id, and the total_price of purchases. Name the third column  total_purchases_price.

Solution

SELECT
  customer_id,
  employee_id,
  SUM(total_price) AS total_purchases_price
FROM purchase
GROUP BY
  customer_id,
  employee_id;

Explanation

This query retrieves the total prices of purchases for each customer–employee pair. The SELECT clause includes here the customer_id column, the employee_id column, and the sum of the total_price for each customer_id in the purchase table. The GROUP BY clause groups the results based on the values in the customer_id and  employee_id columns.

Exercise 16: GROUP BY and HAVING

Exercise

Find the smallest purchase amount for each customer–employee pair. Show only pairs for which there are at least two purchases. The columns' names should be customer_id, employee_id, and minimum_price.

Solution

SELECT
  customer_id,
  employee_id,
  MIN(total_price) AS minimum_price
FROM purchase
GROUP BY customer_id,
  employee_id
HAVING COUNT(total_price) >= 2;

Explanation

This query retrieves the distinct values in the customer_id and employee_id columns along with the minimum purchase price located in the column total_price. The minimum purchase price is named minimum_price. The GROUP BY clause groups the results based on the values in the customer_id and  employee_id columns, and the HAVING clause filters the results to include only those groups where the count of occurrences is greater than or equal to 2.

Did you like these GROUP BY exercises? Ignacio L. Bisso has more for you in his excellent article SQL Practice: 10 GROUP BY Exercises with Solutions.

Exercise 17: Select Columns from 2 Tables with INNER JOIN

Exercise

Show the last and first names of the employees taking care of each purchase and the shipped_date of that purchase.

Solution

SELECT
  last_name,
  first_name,
  shipped_date
FROM employee
JOIN purchase
  ON employee.employee_id = purchase.employee_id;

Explanation

This query performs an INNER JOIN operation between the employee and purchase tables and selects specific columns (last_name, first_name, and shipped_date) from the joined tables. It combines rows from the employee table with matching rows from the purchase table based on the common column employee_id. If there is no match in the purchase table, the row won’t be included in the result set.

Exercise 18: Select Columns from 4 Tables with LEFT JOIN

Exercise

Display the names and emails of all customers and list the names of the products they bought and the product price at the time of purchase. Include customers who haven't made any purchases. Don't rename the columns.

Solution

SELECT
  contact_name,
  contact_email,
  product_name,
  purchase_item.unit_price
FROM customer
LEFT JOIN purchase
  ON customer.customer_id = purchase.customer_id
LEFT JOIN purchase_item
  ON purchase.purchase_id = purchase_item.purchase_id
LEFT JOIN product
  ON purchase_item.product_id = product.product_id;

Explanation

This query performs a triple LEFT JOIN operation between the customer, purchase, purchase_item, and product tables and selects specific columns (contact_name, contact_email, product_name, and unit_price) from the result set. It combines rows from the customer table with matching rows from the purchase, purchase_item, and product tables based on the common columns customer_id, purchase_id, and product_id.

If there is no match in the purchase table, NULL values will be included in the result set for the columns from the purchase_item table.

Exercise 19: Combining INNER JOIN, GROUP BY, and HAVING

Exercise

For each category, find the number of discontinued products. Show only the categories with at least three discontinued products. Sort the rows by the number of discontinued products in descending order. Display two columns: name (the name of the category) and discontinued_products_number.

Solution

SELECT
  category.name,
  COUNT(product_id) AS discontinued_products_number
FROM product
JOIN category
  ON product.category_id = category.category_id
WHERE discontinued IS TRUE
GROUP BY category.name
HAVING COUNT(product_id) >= 3
ORDER BY COUNT(product_id) DESC;

Explanation

This query performs an INNER JOIN operation between the product and category tables. It displays the category name and the count of occurrences of each distinct product_id in the result set. It combines rows from the product table with matching rows from the category table based on the common column category_id.

Rows are grouped by category names; the aggregate function COUNT() is used on the category_id column to return the number of products in that category.  The HAVING clause filters for categories with at least discontinued products. Rows are displayed in descending order of product ID (ORDER BY COUNT(product_id) DESC).

Exercise 20: Another INNER JOIN, GROUP BY, and HAVING Query

Exercise

For each customer, show the number of purchases they’ve made. Include only purchases with a non-NULL ship_city and show only customers whose total cost for all purchases was over 14. The columns' names should be contact_name and purchase_quantity. Sort the rows by contact_name.

Solution

SELECT
  contact_name,
  COUNT(*) AS purchase_quantity
FROM purchase
JOIN customer
  ON purchase.customer_id = customer.customer_id
WHERE ship_city IS NOT NULL
GROUP BY contact_name
HAVING SUM(total_price) > 14
ORDER BY contact_name;

Explanation

This query performs an INNER JOIN operation between the purchase and customer tables and selects the contact_name and the count of occurrences of each distinct purchase from the result set. Rows are grouped by contact names. The HAVING clause allows filtering for the required total price.

Did those JOIN exercises challenge you? I highly recommend you read SQL Joins: 12 Practice Questions with Detailed Answers by Tihomir Babic.

More SQL Practice Problems on LearnSQL.com

If you liked the previous practice problems, you can find more SQL practice problems on LearnSQL.com. Each practice problem is carefully designed with hints, solutions, and explanations. This approach ensures that beginners not only solve the problem but also learn the fundamental concepts of SQL. Unlike conventional theoretical exercises, LearnSQL.com's practice problems are practical and connected to real-life scenarios. Such realistic problems reinforce theoretical understanding and significantly enhance your confidence.

Here are some LearnSQL.com courses I particularly recommend if you’re looking for more practice:

SQL Practice: University

The SQL Practice: University course is an ideal fit for students and those new to SQL. Grounded in a relatable real-life scenario (a fictional university),  this course provides 156 interactive SQL exercises. The initial exercises focus on constructing basic SELECT queries, while the later ones challenge you to craft advanced SQL queries. You’ll use SELECT, WHERE, various JOINs, GROUP BY, HAVING, ORDER BY, set operators, and subqueries.

Basic SQL Practice: A Store

The Basic SQL Practice: A Store course is an excellent choice for individuals managing a physical shop or an online store who wish to enhance their data mastery skills. By taking this course, you'll not only improve your understanding of data; you’ll also potentially boost your profits. If you're operating a white-label application tailored for shop owners (such as an ERP), this course is designed for you. It covers a wide array of topics, including products, categories, inventory, purchases, employee management, and more.

ERP consulting firms often emphasize the importance of mastering SQL to optimize database management and improve business processes.

Basic SQL Practice: Run Track Through Queries!

The Basic SQL Practice: Run Track Through Queries! course involves hands-on work with authentic data. Delve into a database filled with information from the Rio Olympics, the 2019 IAAF World Championships in Doha, and the 2017 IAAF World Championships in London. Discover the champions of sprints, marathons, and long distances, determine the top-performing countries, find average speeds and distances, and more. Whether you have a passion for sports, athletics, or track-related insights, this course offers a tailored experience just for you!

Basic SQL Practice: Blog & Traffic Data

The Basic SQL Practice: Blog & Traffic Data course is designed for individuals supervising a high-traffic blog. Your SQL proficiency will be put to the test as you analyze various aspects of the blog's data – including article popularity, author performance assessment, and the success of article-driven product promotions. Whether you're a blog owner, manager, or SQL student, this course is tailored to suit your needs.

Practice problems with real-world scenarios are the best. Jakub Romanowski summarized the main places to find data sets in his article Where Can I Find Free Online Data Sets to Practice SQL?

SQL Practice Problems: The Way to Go

I really hope this article helped you practice SQL! Every challenge you face is a step forward toward SQL mastery. Whether you're a student just starting or a specialist looking to refine your skills, each practice problem is a building block in your learning foundation. Embrace the journey, enjoy the process, and remember that every SQL practice problem brings you one step closer to becoming an expert. Keep coding, keep growing, and keep SQL-ing your way to success!

One last tip: every month, we publish a new SQL practice course in our SQL Monthly Practice track. It will allow you to learn by solving SQL problems in a continuous and progressive way.

Thanks for reading this article; see you in the next one!