You are given the following SQL statement.

SELECT e.employee_id, e.salary
FROM employees e
WHERE e.salary (
SELECT AVG(s.salary)
FROM employees s
WHERE s.department_id = e.department_id
);

Which of the following queries correctly rewrites this logic using an uncorrelated approach, such as a join or uncorrelated subquery or subquery factoring?

Question

You are given the following SQL statement.

SELECT e.employee_id, e.salary
FROM employees e
WHERE e.salary > (
  SELECT AVG(s.salary)
  FROM employees s
  WHERE s.department_id = e.department_id
);

Which of the following queries correctly rewrites this logic using an uncorrelated approach, such as a join or uncorrelated subquery or subquery factoring?

BlackTom AI · Accepted Answer

Correlated subqueries reference the outer query (here AVG over employees s WHERE s.department_id = e.department_id). To make this uncorrelated you must precompute the per-department average salaries and then join that result to the employees table.

Relevant concepts:
- Correlated vs uncorrelated subqueries: correlated queries depend on the outer row; uncorrelated ones do not.
- Aggregation with GROUP BY: to compute an average per department you group by department_id and apply AVG(salary).
- Joining the precomputed aggregates back to the main table lets you compare each employee’s salary to their department’s average.

Step-by-step reasoning and mapping to the original logic:
1. Compute department averages:
   SELECT department_id, AVG(salary) AS avg_salary
   FROM employees
   GROUP BY department_id
   This produces one row per department with the average salary.
2. Join that result to the employees table on department_id:
   FROM employees e
   JOIN dept_avg d ON e.department_id = d.department_id
3. Apply the comparison originally done in the correlated subquery:
   WHERE e.salary > d.avg_salary
This reproduces the condition e.salary > (AVG of salaries in e.department_id) without referencing the outer row inside the aggregate, so the subquery is uncorrelated.

Why the given option is correct:
- The WITH (CTE) computes department-level averages independently (uncorrelated).
- The JOIN brings each employee together with their department average.
- The WHERE clause enforces the same comparison as the correlated version.

Why the other options are incorrect:
- Option A: Using AVG(s.salary) in a WHERE with a simple JOIN is invalid because AVG is an aggregate and requires GROUP BY (and the placement is syntactically/semantically wrong).
- Option C: The HAVING clause compares AVG(salary) to salary from the outer query inside the subquery — that outer reference is not available there and the logic is inverted/invalid.
- Option D: Uses MAX(salary) instead of AVG(salary), which changes the metric and is therefore incorrect.

The correct uncorrelated rewrite is the WITH ... dept_avg ... JOIN ... WHERE e.salary > d.avg_salary query, matching the provided answer.

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