Maximum Items Under Budget

SQL practice question · Hard · Window Functions · Amazon

stock_items lists warehouse items (item_id, cost). With a fixed budget of 40, find the maximum number of items that can be bought without the total cost exceeding the budget. Buy cheapest first; when costs tie, the lower item_id is taken first. Output one row with columns: budget (always 40), max_items, selected_item_ids (the chosen item_ids sorted ascending and joined with '|', e.g. '2|5|7').

Table: stock_items

Schema of stock_items
ColumnType
item_idINTEGER
costINTEGER
Sample rows of stock_items
item_idcost
110
220
315
45
530
Expected output on the sample data
budgetmax_itemsselected_item_ids
4031|3|4

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