TASK DEFINITION: In this task you are expected to provide an SQL statement from an english description of what that SQL statement does. The description may include multiple steps but you should only ouput one SQL statement that accomplishes every step. An SQL query works by selecting data from a table where certain conditions apply. A table contains columns where every row in that table must have a value for each column. Every table has a primary key that uniquely identifies each row, usually an id. To choose which columns are returned you specify that after the "SELECT" statement. Next, you use a "FROM" statement to specify what tables you want to select the data from. When you specify a table you can rename it with the "AS" statement. You can reference that table by whatever name follows the "AS" statement. If you want to select data from multiple tables you need to use the "JOIN" statement. This will join the tables together by pairing a row in one table with every row in the other table (Cartesian Product). To limit the number of rows returned you should use the "ON" statement. This will only return rows where the condition specified after the statement is true, this is usually an equals operator with primary keys. You can also use the "WHERE" statement to specify that only rows with column values statisfying a certain condition, should be returned. The "GROUP BY" statement will group rows together that have equal column values for whatever columns follows the statement. The "HAVING" statement will return groups that statisfy whatever condition follows the statement. Any column(s) being returned from grouped rows must either be an aggregate function, (AVG, MAX, COUNT, SUM, ...) of a column, or the column(s) that the data was grouped by. To sort the returned data you can use the "ORDER BY" command which will order the data by whatever aggregate function or column follows the statement. The "DESC" statement will sort in descending order and the "ASC" statement will sort in ascending order. Finally, you can use the "LIMIT" statement to return a certain number of rows. When "*" is used in an SQL statement every column is returned. For example, SELECT * FROM table WHERE attribute = 1, will select every column from rows with the attribute column equal to 1.
PROBLEM: Step 1: For each row in station table, find the corresponding rows in trip table.
Step 2: find the average duration in the results of step 1 whose city not equals Palo Alto

SOLUTION: SELECT Avg ( T2.duration ) FROM station AS T1 JOIN trip AS T2 WHERE T1.city ! = "Palo Alto"

PROBLEM: Step 1: find the characteristic_name, other_characteristic_details, characteristic_type_code of Characteristics table for which characteristic_name equals slow.
Step 2: For each row in Characteristics table, find the corresponding rows in Product_Characteristics table.
Step 3: find the number of rows of each value of Product_Characteristics's characteristic_id in the results of step 2.
Step 4: find characteristic_name, other_characteristic_details, characteristic_data_type in the results of step 3 whose corresponding value in step 3 is equals 1.
Step 5: show the rows that are in the results of step 1 but not in the results of step 4

SOLUTION: SELECT T1.characteristic_name , T1.other_characteristic_details , T1.characteristic_type_code FROM Characteristics AS T1 WHERE T1.characteristic_name = "slow" EXCEPT SELECT T1.characteristic_name , T1.other_characteristic_details , T1.characteristic_data_type FROM Characteristics AS T1 JOIN Product_Characteristics AS T2 ON T1.characteristic_id = T2.characteristic_id GROUP BY T2.characteristic_id HAVING Count ( * ) = 1

PROBLEM: Step 1: For each row in department table, find corresponding rows in course table and in student table.
Step 2: find name of the results of step 1 whose course's dept_name equals International Finance

SOLUTION:
SELECT T3.name FROM department AS T1 JOIN course AS T2 ON T2.dept_name = T1.dept_name JOIN student AS T3 ON T1.dept_name = T3.dept_name WHERE T2.dept_name = "International Finance"