EasySQL challenge #43WHERE

Find Names That Start with a Letter Using LIKE

Return the employees whose first name begins with A.

The challenge runs on the SQLabHub practice database (SQLite) and uses the employees table. You can solve it in the browser, with nothing to install.

Solve This SQL Challenge

The task

Find employees whose first name starts with A.

A correct answer returns 13 rows with 12 columns: id, first_name, last_name, email, department, department_id, title, salary, hire_date, manager_id, city, status.

Tables used in this challenge

`employees` 120 rows

id INTEGER (PK) · first_name TEXT · last_name TEXT · email TEXT · department TEXT · department_id INTEGER · title TEXT · salary REAL · hire_date TEXT · manager_id INTEGER · city TEXT · status TEXT

First 3 rows of the employees table
id	first_name	last_name	email	department	department_id	title	salary	hire_date	manager_id	city	status
1	William	Lewis	wlewis18@corp.io	Customer Success	7	Senior CS Manager	61774	2022-07-24	NULL	San Diego	active
2	John	Miller	jmiller51@corp.io	Legal	8	Paralegal	191694	2021-08-09	NULL	San Diego	active
3	Daniel	Rivera	drivera50@corp.io	Engineering	1	VP Engineering	135067	2016-06-06	NULL	Houston	active

The first rows of each table are shown. See how all the tables relate on the database schema page.

Expected output

Expected output of the challenge
id	first_name	last_name	email	department	department_id	title	salary	hire_date	manager_id	city	status
6	Amy	Nguyen	anguyen90@corp.io	Design	10	Product Designer	194543	2021-01-16	NULL	Seattle	on_leave
16	Ashley	Lee	alee28@corp.io	HR	4	HR Manager	84033	2015-05-08	9	Los Angeles	on_leave
28	Amy	Nguyen	anguyen62@corp.io	Finance	5	Financial Analyst	151150	2019-05-14	1	Houston	active
38	Ashley	White	awhite16@corp.io	Design	10	Product Designer	75120	2016-11-26	2	Philadelphia	active
40	Andrew	Lewis	alewis49@corp.io	Legal	8	Legal Counsel	72975	2017-05-04	1	Denver	on_leave

First 5 of 13 rows. This is the output of the model solution on the practice database. The task does not fix a sort order, so your rows may come back in a different order.

What you practise

Returning every column of a table with SELECT *
Filtering rows with a WHERE condition
Matching text patterns with LIKE and the % wildcard

Hint and approach

Try the challenge first. Open these only when you need them.

Show the hint

LIKE A%

Show the step-by-step approach

How the model solution is built, in the order the database evaluates it:

Read from the employees table.
Filter in WHERE: keep the rows where first_name starts with "A" (a LIKE pattern with the % wildcard).
Return every column with SELECT *.

Model solution

Checking your session…

What to watch for

Put the wildcard only at the end: 'A%' anchors the match to the first character. A leading wildcard ('%A') would mean ends with A, and prevents an index on the column from being used.

LIKE. LIKE without a wildcard is just an equality test. Forgetting the % on one side turns "contains" into "starts with" or "ends with".
WHERE. WHERE is evaluated before the SELECT list, so it cannot use a column alias defined there or the result of an aggregate.
SELECT *. SELECT * is fine for exploring, but its output changes whenever a column is added to the table. Queries that feed a report should name their columns.