1. Back To Blog

SQL Server interview questions: -What is CTE (Common table expression)?

• By Shiv Prasad Koirala in SQL
• Jan 4th, 2013
• 1500
• 0

You can also read our 10 SQL Server interview questions from here.

This SQL Server interview question was asked in Cognizant to one of our readers.

CTE is a temporary result set which can be used within a execution of a SINGLE insert,update,delete or select query.

Using CTE is a 4 step process:-

• All CTE starts with "with" clause.
  
  
• After with you need to define CTE name and the field names. For instance in the below code snippet I have 3 fields Count,Column and Id. The name of CTE is "MyTemp".
  
  
• Once you have defined CTE we need to specify the SQL which will give the result for the CTE.
  
  
• Finally you can use the CTE in your SQL query.
  
  
  

 You can also see SQL Server Interview questions CTE (Common table expression):-