This SQL exercise is a part of a section dedicated for data analysts , providing data analysis tasks that require both business understanding and technical skills.
About this Exercise
Stack Exchange Is a network of sites, allowing different communities learn and share their knowledge.
Movies & TV Stack Exchange – is one of these sites, focused entirely on questions and answers regarding movies and series. The following database is built according to its structure, and simulates some of the data it has.
Diagram
ERD General Description
This database consists of 4 tables
- Posts – Each post can have different comments, each post can be voted by different users (in order to improve its ranking)
- Votes – Each vote consists of a voting ID, user number (FK), post number (FK), and a date of creation
- Comments – The details regarding the various posts comments
- Users – The details of the users who commented / wrote a post / voted
Download
The database creation script can be downloaded using the following link
Exercises
The following exercises are constructed in ascending difficulty order. First ones are pretty easy, made for warm-up. The advanced exercises, on the other hand, can be quite challenging.
Basic Analysis
- How many post were made each year ?
- How many votes were made in each day of the week (Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, etc.) ?
- List all comments created on September 19th, 2012
- List all users under the age of 33, living in London
Advanced Analysis
- Display the number of votes for each post title
- Display posts with comments created by users living in the same location as the post creator
- How many users have never voted ?
- Display all posts having the highest amount of comments
- For each post, how many votes are coming from users living in Canada ? What’s their percentage of the total number of votes
- How many hours in average, it takes to the first comment to be posted after a creation of a new post
- Whats the most common post tag ?
- Create a pivot table displaying how many posts were created for each year (Y axis) and each month (X axis)
Solutions
-- Basic Analytics
-- 1. How many post were made in each year
SELECT COUNT(*) number_of_posts, YEAR(CreationDate) creation_year
FROM posts
GROUP BY YEAR(CreationDate)
-- 2. How many votes were made in each day of the week (Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, etc.) ?
SELECT COUNT(*) AS 'Number of Posts', DATENAME(DW, CreationDate) AS 'Day of the Week'
FROM votes
GROUP BY DATENAME(DW, CreationDate)
-- 3. List all comments created on 2012-12-19
SELECT *
FROM comments
WHERE CAST(creationDate AS DATE) = '2012-12-19'
-- Or
SELECT *
FROM comments
WHERE DATEDIFF(DAY, CreationDate, '2012-12-19') = 0
-- 4. List all users under the age of 33, living in London
SELECT *
FROM users
WHERE age < 33
AND location LIKE '%London%'
-- Advanced Analytics
-- 1. Display the number of votes for each post title
SELECT pst.Title, COUNT(*) number_of_votes
FROM posts pst JOIN votes vt
ON pst.Id = vt.postID
GROUP BY pst.Title
ORDER BY COUNT(*) DESC
-- 2. Display comments created by users living in the same location as the post creator
SELECT pst.Id AS 'post_id',
pst.Title AS 'post_title',
pst.OwnerUserID AS 'created_by_user',
usr_p.Id AS 'user_id',
usr_p.DisplayName AS 'creator_user_name',
usr_p.location AS 'creator_location',
cmt.UserId AS 'commentor_id',
usr_c.DisplayName AS 'commentor_user_name',
usr_c.location AS 'commentor_location'
FROM posts pst JOIN users usr_p
ON pst.OwnerUserID = usr_p.Id
JOIN comments cmt
ON cmt.postId = pst.Id
JOIN users usr_c
ON cmt.UserID = usr_c.Id
WHERE usr_c.location = usr_p.location
-- 3. How many users have never voted ?
WITH "VOTE-CTE" AS
(
SELECT id FROM users
EXCEPT
SELECT userID FROM votes
)
SELECT COUNT(*)
FROM "VOTE-CTE"
-- 4. Display all posts having the highest amount of comments
WITH "TOP-COMMENT-POSTS"
AS
(
SELECT pst.Title,
COUNT(*) AS 'number_of_comments' ,
DENSE_RANK() OVER (ORDER BY COUNT(*) DESC) AS 'comment_count_ranking'
FROM posts pst JOIN comments cmt
ON pst.id = cmt.postid
GROUP BY pst.Title
)
SELECT Title
FROM "TOP-COMMENT-POSTS"
WHERE comment_count_ranking = 1
-- 5. For each post, how many votes are coming from users living in Canada ?
-- What's their percentage of the total number of votes
SELECT pst.Title,
COUNT(*) number_of_votes,
SUM(CASE WHEN usr.location LIKE '%canada%' THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) AS 'votes_from_canada',
CAST(SUM(CASE WHEN usr.location LIKE '%canada%' THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) AS FLOAT) /
CAST(COUNT(*) AS FLOAT) AS 'votes_percentage'
FROM posts pst JOIN votes vt
ON pst.Id = vt.postID
JOIN users usr
ON vt.UserID = usr.id
GROUP BY pst.Title
ORDER BY COUNT(*) DESC
-- 6. How many hours in average, it takes to the first comment to be posted after a creation of a new post
;WITH "COMMENTS-TIMING-CTE"
AS
(
SELECT pst.id AS 'post_id',
pst.Title AS 'post_title',
pst.creationDate AS 'post_creation_date',
cmt.creationDate AS 'comment_creation_date',
DENSE_RANK() OVER (PARTITION BY pst.id ORDER BY cmt.creationDate) AS 'comment_rank'
FROM posts pst JOIN comments cmt
ON pst.Id = cmt.postID
)
SELECT AVG(DATEDIFF(HOUR, post_creation_date, comment_creation_date)) AS 'avg_num_of_hours'
FROM "COMMENTS-TIMING-CTE"
WHERE comment_rank = 1
-- 7. Whats the most common post tag ?
-- Note, each post may have 1 or more tags.
-- The goal of this question is to find the most common *single* tag
;WITH "CTE-TAGS-SEP" (Tags) AS
(
SELECT CAST(Tags AS VARCHAR(MAX))
FROM Posts
UNION ALL
SELECT STUFF(Tags, 1, CHARINDEX('><' , Tags), '')
FROM "CTE-TAGS-SEP"
WHERE Tags LIKE '%><%'
), "CTE-TAGS-COUNTER" AS
(
SELECT CASE WHEN Tags LIKE '%><%' THEN LEFT(Tags, CHARINDEX('><' , Tags))
ELSE Tags
END AS 'Tags'
FROM "CTE-TAGS-SEP"
)
SELECT TOP 1 COUNT(*), Tags
FROM "CTE-TAGS-COUNTER"
GROUP BY Tags
ORDER BY COUNT(*) DESC
-- Solution by YB
SELECT REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(Tags, '><', ','), '<',''),'>','') 'TAGS' INTO #TABI1
FROM posts
SELECT VALUE, COUNT(*)
FROM #TABI1
CROSS APPLY string_split(TAGS, ',')
GROUP BY VALUE
ORDER BY COUNT(*) DESC
-- 8. Create a pivot table displaying how many posts were created for each year (Y axis) and each month (X axis)
SELECT *
FROM (
SELECT YEAR(CreationDate) AS 'Year', DATENAME(MONTH,CreationDate) AS 'Month', id
FROM posts
) AS S
PIVOT
(
COUNT(id)
FOR [Month] IN ([January], [February], [March], [April], [May], [June], [July], [August], [September], [October], [November], [December])
) AS PVT
ORDER BY [Year]
