Lesson 13.2

SQL Practice: Filtering the Longest Web Sessions

Not every question is a GROUP BY. Sometimes you just want the individual standout rows.

Aggregates summarize, but sometimes you want the raw rows themselves. The specific sessions where a visitor stuck around. That is a plain WHERE filter, no grouping involved.

Here "engaged" is defined as a session lasting at least 400 seconds. The comparison duration_seconds >= 400 keeps only those rows, and sorting brings the longest to the top.

A stable sort needs a tie-breaker

Two sessions could share the same duration. Adding session_id as a second sort key means the ranking is identical on every run. The same habit that keeps LIMIT results deterministic.

Pattern

select columns
from table_name
where number_column >= threshold
order by number_column desc, tie_breaker

Schema · Website Analytics Table · sessions 7 columns · 30 rows

Table · sessions

One row per visit. Anonymous visits have a null user_id; organic and direct visits have a null campaign_id.

7 columns · 30 rows

session_id int user_id int session_date date channel text campaign_id int device text duration_seconds int

Your task

Return the session id, channel, device, and duration for every session that lasted 400 seconds or longer, longest first. Break ties by session id.