Sakila database: schema, tables and SQL exercises

Sakila is the MySQL sample database for a chain of DVD rental stores. On SQLtest.online you can use it right in your browser: solve exercises with automatic checking and run your own queries in the playground, with nothing to install.

• 16 tables and 7 views
• 1,000 films
• 16,044 rentals
• 179 SQL exercises

What is Sakila

Sakila was created by Mike Hillyer of the MySQL documentation team, so that examples in the documentation and in books could share one realistic schema. It is named after Sakila, the dolphin in the MySQL logo, and is distributed under the BSD license.

The database models an everyday business: a film catalog with actors and genres, customers and staff of two stores, disc rentals and payments. That makes it good for learning: the relationships are clear without explanation, and there is enough data for grouping, window functions and analytics.

ER diagram

The diagram shows the Sakila tables and the foreign keys between them. Click it to open the full-size version.

What's inside

The Sakila tables fall into three groups.

The key thing to remember: a customer rents a disc, not a film. So rental is linked to film through inventory, not directly. The film_text table is a helper copy of titles and descriptions for full-text search.

How much data the main tables hold:

Table structure

Click a table to see its columns, a sample row and its keys.

Sample queries

These queries show how the tables are connected. Copy any of them and run it in the playground.

A film and its language: a simple many-to-one relationship.

SELECT f.title, l.name AS language, f.rental_rate, f.length
FROM film f
JOIN language l ON l.language_id = f.language_id
ORDER BY f.film_id
LIMIT 3;

Where a customer lives: a chain of four tables.

SELECT c.first_name, c.last_name, ci.city, co.country
FROM customer c
JOIN address a ON a.address_id = c.address_id
JOIN city ci ON ci.city_id = a.city_id
JOIN country co ON co.country_id = ci.country_id
ORDER BY c.customer_id
LIMIT 3;

Which film was rented and how much was paid: from a rental to its film through inventory.

SELECT r.rental_date, f.title, p.amount
FROM rental r
JOIN inventory i ON i.inventory_id = r.inventory_id
JOIN film f ON f.film_id = i.film_id
JOIN payment p ON p.rental_id = r.rental_id
ORDER BY r.rental_id
LIMIT 3;

SQL exercises by topic

There are 179 exercises on the Sakila database, from simple SELECT queries to analytics with window functions. Solutions are checked automatically on a real MySQL server. The number on the right is how many exercises a topic has; the colored dots show its difficulty range.

• SQL Basics 39
• Calculations 15
• Aggregation Functions 27
• Subqueries 8
• Common Table Expressions (CTE) 5
• Window Functions 9
• Analytical queries 33
• Data manipulation queries (DML) 12
• Data Definition Language (DDL) 4

Where to start

The first exercises of the "Sakila database" section:

1. Get the actors
2. Retrieve Actor Names
3. Ordered Movie Titles
4. Top 10 Movies by Title
5. Films List - Third Page
6. Sort Movies by Multiple Fields
7. The Longest Movie
8. Identify Long Movies
9. Find Long Comedies
10. Classic Movies

All Sakila exercises →