GATE - Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (DA) · India · IITs and IISc on rotation (2026: IIT Guwahati)
Original practice questions written to the published syllabus · not past papersStoring and serving agricultural data at scale: relational design and SQL, data warehouses and multidimensional models, big-data tools, APIs and open-data portals, sensor and IoT streams, FAIR data and data governance, and the information systems that hold trial, survey and market data.
In the exams: AICE-JRF Computer Application Unit 9 DBMS (heavy); GATE DA 'Database Management and Warehousing' (heavy); AIEEA-PG Group 07 MS Access databases (present)
How our questions for GATE spread across the units of Databases, Big Data & Agricultural Information Systems. Difficulty: 5 easy, 17 medium, 0 hard.
| Data warehousing: star and snowflake schemas, OLAP | 3 | |
| Big-data tools: distributed storage and processing | 3 | |
| Relational model, ER modelling and normalisation | 2 | |
| SQL and PL/SQL | 2 | |
| Transactions, concurrency, indexing and recovery | 2 | |
| Distributed databases | 2 | |
| APIs, open-data portals and data standards (e.g. FAOSTAT, national portals) | 2 | |
| Sensor, IoT and drone data pipelines | 2 | |
| FAIR principles, metadata and data governance | 2 | |
| Agricultural information and decision-support systems | 2 |
Choose an answer, then open the working. Each explanation says why the right answer is right and why the others are not.
The Cartesian product of relations with 10 and 20 rows has how many rows?
B. 200
Every row of one is paired with every row of the other: 10 × 20.
Further reading: Elmasri and Navathe, Fundamentals of Database Systems (2016); Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan, Database System Concepts (2019); Kimball and Ross, The Data Warehouse Toolkit (2013); Wilkinson et al., FAIR principles (2016)
farm_id → village and village → district hold in a table keyed by farm_id. The dependency of district on farm_id is:
C. Transitive, violating 3NF
District depends on the key through the non-key attribute village.
Further reading: Elmasri and Navathe, Fundamentals of Database Systems (2016); Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan, Database System Concepts (2019); Kimball and Ross, The Data Warehouse Toolkit (2013); Wilkinson et al., FAIR principles (2016)
In SQL, the condition WHERE yield = NULL returns:
A. No rows
Comparisons with NULL are unknown; use IS NULL.
Further reading: Elmasri and Navathe, Fundamentals of Database Systems (2016); Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan, Database System Concepts (2019); Kimball and Ross, The Data Warehouse Toolkit (2013); Wilkinson et al., FAIR principles (2016)
The logical order of evaluation of a SELECT query begins with:
A. FROM
FROM → WHERE → GROUP BY → HAVING → SELECT → ORDER BY.
Further reading: Elmasri and Navathe, Fundamentals of Database Systems (2016); Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan, Database System Concepts (2019); Kimball and Ross, The Data Warehouse Toolkit (2013); Wilkinson et al., FAIR principles (2016)
B+ tree indexes are preferred over hash indexes for:
C. Range queries
Hash indexes support equality, not ranges.
Further reading: Elmasri and Navathe, Fundamentals of Database Systems (2016); Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan, Database System Concepts (2019); Kimball and Ross, The Data Warehouse Toolkit (2013); Wilkinson et al., FAIR principles (2016)
In a star schema, the central table of numeric measures is the:
C. Fact table
Dimensions such as time, region and crop surround it.
Further reading: Elmasri and Navathe, Fundamentals of Database Systems (2016); Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan, Database System Concepts (2019); Kimball and Ross, The Data Warehouse Toolkit (2013); Wilkinson et al., FAIR principles (2016)
Moving from district totals to regional totals in an OLAP cube is:
D. Roll-up
Drill-down goes the other way.
Further reading: Elmasri and Navathe, Fundamentals of Database Systems (2016); Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan, Database System Concepts (2019); Kimball and Ross, The Data Warehouse Toolkit (2013); Wilkinson et al., FAIR principles (2016)
Time-series databases are designed mainly for:
B. Timestamped readings arriving continuously
Retention policies keep raw and aggregated data efficiently.
Further reading: Elmasri and Navathe, Fundamentals of Database Systems (2016); Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan, Database System Concepts (2019); Kimball and Ross, The Data Warehouse Toolkit (2013); Wilkinson et al., FAIR principles (2016)
A persistent identifier such as a DOI mainly makes a data set:
B. Findable over the long term
Identifiers remain valid when locations change.
Further reading: Elmasri and Navathe, Fundamentals of Database Systems (2016); Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan, Database System Concepts (2019); Kimball and Ross, The Data Warehouse Toolkit (2013); Wilkinson et al., FAIR principles (2016)
Market information systems disseminate prices to farmers through:
B. Text messages, voice, radio and web
Timely prices improve bargaining positions.
Further reading: Elmasri and Navathe, Fundamentals of Database Systems (2016); Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan, Database System Concepts (2019); Kimball and Ross, The Data Warehouse Toolkit (2013); Wilkinson et al., FAIR principles (2016)
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