Job Application Test from Hell
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It was by email, and solvable. Durban and Cape Town contacts are sorted by name in the requirement. All contacts are sorted only by Region in the input data.
OK, so it's sorted by two fields we can't see ( region and email address ) ?
Christian Graus Driven to the arms of OSX by Vista. Read my blog to find out how I've worked around bugs in Microsoft tools and frameworks.
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I'm not looking for an answer here, I found my own, but this is quite a hard question. Given the table from Fig.1, write an SQL Select statement that would re-organize the results to look like Fig.2 Fig. 1
Region
Contact
Cape Town
Fred
CapeTown
Joe
Cape Town
Anna
Durban
John
Durban
Mary
Johannesburg
Frank
Fig. 2
Region
Contact
Durban
John
Durban
Mary
Johannesburg
Frank
Cape Town
Anna
CapeTown
Fred
Cape Town
Joe
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This will fail, since one of the regions has been entered as "CapeTown" instead of "Cape Town". :)
Chris Meech I am Canadian. [heard in a local bar] In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. [Yogi Berra] posting about Crystal Reports here is like discussing gay marriage on a catholic church’s website.[Nishant Sivakumar]
No it won’t because the missing interval is due to the level of Brady’s BAC rather than the original task conditions. :)
The narrow specialist in the broad sense of the word is a complete idiot in the narrow sense of the word. Advertise here – minimum three posts per day are guaranteed.
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No it won’t because the missing interval is due to the level of Brady’s BAC rather than the original task conditions. :)
The narrow specialist in the broad sense of the word is a complete idiot in the narrow sense of the word. Advertise here – minimum three posts per day are guaranteed.
Haha, no, I suspect it was a typo on their part, but I treated it like I would a landmine. :~
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select * from (select * from dbo.RegionTable RT
where RT.Region = 'Durban' order by RT.Contact asc) as union1
union all
select * from (select * from dbo.RegionTable RT
where RT.Region = 'Johannesburg' order by RT.Contact asc) as union3
union all
select * from (select * from dbo.RegionTable RT
where RT.Region = 'Cape Town' order by RT.Contact asc) as union2The narrow specialist in the broad sense of the word is a complete idiot in the narrow sense of the word. Advertise here – minimum three posts per day are guaranteed.
The ORDER BY clause is invalid in views, inline functions, derived tables, subqueries, and common table expressions, unless TOP or FOR XML is also specified. :) Here is mine, a little more general but very much the same:
select first.*, 0 outerSeq from (select top(select COUNT(*) from Contacts) * from Contacts where Region >= 'Durban' order by Region, Contact) first
union all
select second.*, 1 outerSeq from (select top (select COUNT(*) from Contacts) * from Contacts where Region < 'Durban' order by Region, Contact) as second
order by outerSeq -
Haha, no, I suspect it was a typo on their part, but I treated it like I would a landmine. :~
What? Hold a protest rally outside the Pentagon? :confused:
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select region, contact from ( select region, contact, case when region='Johannesburg' then 5 when region='Durban' then 1 else 10 end as Expr1 from TableName ) as Tbl order by Expr1, Contact
TOMZ_KV
This is shorter than my solution, I like it!:thumbsup:
The narrow specialist in the broad sense of the word is a complete idiot in the narrow sense of the word. Advertise here – minimum three posts per day are guaranteed.
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I'm not looking for an answer here, I found my own, but this is quite a hard question. Given the table from Fig.1, write an SQL Select statement that would re-organize the results to look like Fig.2 Fig. 1
Region
Contact
Cape Town
Fred
CapeTown
Joe
Cape Town
Anna
Durban
John
Durban
Mary
Johannesburg
Frank
Fig. 2
Region
Contact
Durban
John
Durban
Mary
Johannesburg
Frank
Cape Town
Anna
CapeTown
Fred
Cape Town
Joe
Well, one way to do this would be to do something along the lines of:
SELECT Region, Contact FROM WhatACrappyTest
ORDER BY SUBSTRING(Region,2,1) DESC, Contact ASCThis works based on the fact that the second character is ordered descending, and the contact orders ascending. This even takes the fact that your have CapeTown and Cape Town in the Region column. Obviously, the interviewer should be challenged on the validity of this question.
I have CDO, it's OCD with the letters in the right order; just as they ruddy well should be
Forgive your enemies - it messes with their heads
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The correct answer is: "With which database system?" P.S. With Access/Jet via ADO.net:
select * from RegionContact order by len(Region) mod 2,Region,Contact
Region Contact
Durban John
Durban Mary
Johannesburg Frank
Cape Town Anna
Cape Town Fred
Cape Town Joe6 records affected.
modified on Wednesday, November 24, 2010 4:03 PM
PIEBALDconsult wrote:
Cape Town
According to the OP, one of those should be without a space.
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Well, one way to do this would be to do something along the lines of:
SELECT Region, Contact FROM WhatACrappyTest
ORDER BY SUBSTRING(Region,2,1) DESC, Contact ASCThis works based on the fact that the second character is ordered descending, and the contact orders ascending. This even takes the fact that your have CapeTown and Cape Town in the Region column. Obviously, the interviewer should be challenged on the validity of this question.
I have CDO, it's OCD with the letters in the right order; just as they ruddy well should be
Forgive your enemies - it messes with their heads
If I was the interviewer, I'd have hired you based on that answer.
Christian Graus Driven to the arms of OSX by Vista. Read my blog to find out how I've worked around bugs in Microsoft tools and frameworks.
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Well, one way to do this would be to do something along the lines of:
SELECT Region, Contact FROM WhatACrappyTest
ORDER BY SUBSTRING(Region,2,1) DESC, Contact ASCThis works based on the fact that the second character is ordered descending, and the contact orders ascending. This even takes the fact that your have CapeTown and Cape Town in the Region column. Obviously, the interviewer should be challenged on the validity of this question.
I have CDO, it's OCD with the letters in the right order; just as they ruddy well should be
Forgive your enemies - it messes with their heads
Vader (Star Wars Gangsta Rap):
Impressive, now release your anger; can't you sense that your friends are in danger?
The impressiveness of your solution and you being who you are reminded me of that quote. :)
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Yeah, I expect that's the main thing he was to glean from the question.
Christian Graus Driven to the arms of OSX by Vista. Read my blog to find out how I've worked around bugs in Microsoft tools and frameworks.
Sure, but which one? Fred or Joe? I performed some data cleanup, so sue me. :-D Edit: WTF?! How'd it wind up attached to the wrong post? Sorry, just playing through...
modified on Wednesday, November 24, 2010 5:44 PM
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PIEBALDconsult wrote:
Cape Town
According to the OP, one of those should be without a space.
Sure, but which one? Fred or Joe? I performed some data cleanup, so sue me. :-D (Now lets see if it stays where it's supposed to be.) :mad:
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Well, one way to do this would be to do something along the lines of:
SELECT Region, Contact FROM WhatACrappyTest
ORDER BY SUBSTRING(Region,2,1) DESC, Contact ASCThis works based on the fact that the second character is ordered descending, and the contact orders ascending. This even takes the fact that your have CapeTown and Cape Town in the Region column. Obviously, the interviewer should be challenged on the validity of this question.
I have CDO, it's OCD with the letters in the right order; just as they ruddy well should be
Forgive your enemies - it messes with their heads
Pete O'Hanlon wrote:
even takes the fact that your have CapeTown and Cape Town
Have you tested that?
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Pete O'Hanlon wrote:
even takes the fact that your have CapeTown and Cape Town
Have you tested that?
He's only looking at the second character. In the case of "CapeTown", that'd be "a". In the case of "Cape Town", that'd be "a". What's there to test?
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Sure, but which one? Fred or Joe? I performed some data cleanup, so sue me. :-D (Now lets see if it stays where it's supposed to be.) :mad:
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Pete O'Hanlon wrote:
even takes the fact that your have CapeTown and Cape Town
Have you tested that?
With your above observation that "CapeTown" is first attached to Joe and then to Fred, your message makes more sense. I think I like this interview question... all kinds of details to help root out those who don't pay very good attention (I am apparently one of them). :)
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The only obvious ordering sequence is the number of capitalized letters in Region, followed by the Region, followed by the Contact. :)
Chris Meech I am Canadian. [heard in a local bar] In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. [Yogi Berra] posting about Crystal Reports here is like discussing gay marriage on a catholic church’s website.[Nishant Sivakumar]
And the number of characters in an entry.
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I'm not looking for an answer here, I found my own, but this is quite a hard question. Given the table from Fig.1, write an SQL Select statement that would re-organize the results to look like Fig.2 Fig. 1
Region
Contact
Cape Town
Fred
CapeTown
Joe
Cape Town
Anna
Durban
John
Durban
Mary
Johannesburg
Frank
Fig. 2
Region
Contact
Durban
John
Durban
Mary
Johannesburg
Frank
Cape Town
Anna
CapeTown
Fred
Cape Town
Joe
First thing's first, the order. It appears to be grouped by Region, the groups are ordered by MIN(Contact) (assuming MIN/MAX works in the way I expect, i.e. SELECT MAX('a', 'z') would return 'z' - never had to do an aggregate over varchar fields, thank GOD) and then ordered by Contact ascending. Thought process: Durban, JBurg, Cape Town - no obvious ordering there, but they're grouped... John, Mary - alphabetical Anna, Fred, Joe - alphabetical John, Frank, Anna - alphabetical (desc), so the earliest name in the alphabet in each region is used to order the regions... So, here's the SQL (SQL Server 2008):
SELECT
Region, Contact
FROM
TheStupidestTableEver
ORDER BY
MIN(Contact) OVER(PARTITION BY Region) desc, ContactResults:
Region Contact
Durban John
Durban Mary
Johannesburg Frank
Cape Town Anna
Cape Town Fred
Cape Town JoeSo, do I win a prize? ;P In fact, I don't need one, that was a satisfying problem to solve :-D
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The ORDER BY clause is invalid in views, inline functions, derived tables, subqueries, and common table expressions, unless TOP or FOR XML is also specified. :) Here is mine, a little more general but very much the same:
select first.*, 0 outerSeq from (select top(select COUNT(*) from Contacts) * from Contacts where Region >= 'Durban' order by Region, Contact) first
union all
select second.*, 1 outerSeq from (select top (select COUNT(*) from Contacts) * from Contacts where Region < 'Durban' order by Region, Contact) as second
order by outerSeqSELECT Region, Contact
FROM Fig1
ORDER BY
CASE Region WHEN 'Durban' THEN 1 ELSE 2 END,
ContactTip, you can do:
SELECT TOP 100 PERCENT * FROM Fig1
Even better tip: Don't do that - your query doesn't guarantee (although will more than likely result in) the correct ordering. You should have sorted by outerSeq, Contact in the outer query. See http://blogs.msdn.com/b/queryoptteam/archive/2006/03/24/560396.aspx