Dear SAS-L,

I've been interviewing candidates for a SAS ETL position. One of the questions I've been using to determine if they know at least the very basics of data manipulation is to ask them the following question. I would expect almost anyone with SQL coding to experience to be able to answer it without hesitation. However, of the 6 candidates I've asked, only one of them was able to answer it exactly without any hesitation or help. I'm wondering if there's something wrong with the way I'm framing the question or something wrong with my terminology that's throwing them off. Most of them have been able to identify the issues with the join, but they usually fumble the specifics. Perhaps it's just being put on the spot that's the problem. Any ideas?

Thanks, Sterling

(the tables are formatted more nicely on the paper I give them with these tables)

Claims: Claim_Id Group_Id Paid_Amt 1 A 10 2 A 20 3 B 5 4 C 35 5 D 15

Groups: Group_Id Plan_Type A PPO B PPO B HSA C PPO

Question: Suppose you have a list of claims in one table and a list of plan types for each group in another, as shown above. You want to associate each claim with the group's plan type and so you perform a left join of the claims table with the groups table by linking on the Group_Id. How many rows would be returned by the left join?