Tell me about a time you noticed a recurring data or reporting problem (such as inconsistent metrics or slow recurring queries) and proactively proposed a strategic improvement using SQL (e.g., new views, standardized queries, or data model changes). What was your rationale, and how did you execute the solution end-to-end?

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VirtualInterview.AI · Accepted Answer

During a class project that simulated a small e‑commerce company, our weekly sales report kept showing different revenue numbers depending on who ran the query. The differences were small (1–3%), but it was enough to undermine trust. I dug into everyone’s SQL and realized each person was hand‑coding joins and filters slightly differently, especially around refunds and cancelled orders.

I proposed creating a standardized reporting view in SQL that handled all the business rules in one place: consistent date truncation, a unified definition of “completed order,” and a single source for currency conversions. I wrote the view, documented the logic, and refactored our main reports to use it.

Query logic went from ~80 lines per report to about 15, and all four team members’ dashboards aligned 100%. Our report generation time dropped from 20–30 minutes of manual tweaking to under 5.

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