Interview Questions 704

Does a Tester need SQL?

Answer: Yes. For a Tester, SQL is needed. I had the same question in mind before I came to the actual implication-what is SQL used for? And now, I know that when we do the backend testing (see qaquestions.com for details), we need to write SQL queries to retrieve the data from the database and compare this data to the one with reports or output. Another scenario is, if something goes wrong in the application, for example, if there is an error, then we might have to write SQL queries to retrieve the data from the database and check what went wrong. Let’s say, we need to check in the Error Log table what went wrong. To check this, we open the database, go to Error Log table and find out that happened. In the Error Log table, there are many records, so which one is your error then? To find out which one is yours, we need to write SQL queries. Example, you logged in to the application with User ID=devin99 and password=sn992jj. Now, to retrieve your record, you can write a query some thing like this: select * from Error Log where userID=devin99; This query will retriev your record only so that you can see what happened.