# Exercise: Build-It Pizzeria

Design a database for a build-your-own pizzeria from its menu and order slips, write the script that builds and fills it, and answer the owner's questions with queries.

Journeyman · Database · SQL · Updated October 30, 2026

Build-It Pizzeria lets customers build their own pizza: a size, a crust and any toppings. Its orders are still on paper slips. You'll design the database, build it with a script, fill it with the first orders, and answer the owner's questions.

## Get the exercise code

Open this lesson's GitHub repository, [github.com/ask-codey/exercise-build-it-pizzeria](https://github.com/ask-codey/exercise-build-it-pizzeria), also linked from the **Exercise** box beside the lesson. Click **Code**, then **Download ZIP**, and unzip it into your `bootcamp` folder. Or clone it with Git.

| File | What's in it |
|---|---|
| `README.md` | The menu (sizes, crusts, toppings and their prices), the customers, and four order slips |
| `BuildItPizzeria.sql` | Your script, to write |
| `Questions.sql` | Six questions for the finished database, each with the answer to expect |

## What to do

1. **Design.** Sketch the tables on paper or in a drawing tool: one subject per table, a primary key in each, a foreign key for every link. Watch for the many-to-many: a pizza can have many toppings, and a topping can be on many pizzas.
2. **Script.** In `BuildItPizzeria.sql`, create the database and its tables, with the right types, `NOT NULL`, `IDENTITY`, defaults, and primary key, foreign key, `UNIQUE` and `CHECK` constraints.
3. **Data.** At the end of the script, insert the menu, the customers and the four orders.
4. **Questions.** Run the script, then answer each question in `Questions.sql` with a query, and compare with its **Expect** line.
5. **Diagram.** Make a database diagram of your finished database in SSMS, and compare it with your sketch.

## Hints

- **Normalize the slips.** Each slip mixes facts about a customer, an order, its pizzas and their toppings. Each kind of fact gets a table of its own.
- **Prices live in the menu tables.** A pizza line stores its size, crust and quantity; its cost is worked out from the menu.
- **Constraints that fit the menu:** a size's name is unique, a quantity is more than zero, a delivery fee is never negative.
- **Start the script with `USE master` and `DROP DATABASE IF EXISTS`**, so you can fix and run it as often as you like. SQL Server can't drop a database that's in use, so close any other window that's using BuildItPizzeria first.
- **A pizza with no toppings** has no rows in the topping link table: use a `LEFT JOIN` when adding up topping prices.

## When you're done

Your script builds the database from nothing, every answer matches its **Expect** line, and your diagram shows the tables and links you sketched. Run the script once more to be sure it starts fresh cleanly.

## Submit your exercise

The exercise is how you finish this lesson. When your work is done, put it on GitHub in a repo of your own, then submit that repo's address here.

1. On GitHub, click **+**, then **New repository**. Name it (for example `exercise-build-it-pizzeria`), choose **Public**, and click **Create repository**. Leave out the README: your folder already has one.
2. In a terminal in your exercise folder (Git Bash on Windows), send your work to your new repo. If you downloaded the ZIP:

   ```bash
   git init -b main
   git add .
   git commit -m "My solution"
   git remote add origin https://github.com/your-name/exercise-build-it-pizzeria.git
   git push -u origin main
   ```

   If you cloned the starter instead, point your copy at your own repo, then commit and push:

   ```bash
   git remote set-url origin https://github.com/your-name/exercise-build-it-pizzeria.git
   git add .
   git commit -m "My solution"
   git push -u origin main
   ```

3. Paste your repo's address, such as `https://github.com/your-name/exercise-build-it-pizzeria`, into **Submit your exercise** on this page. The site checks that the repo is public and holds your commits, and then the lesson is complete.

Changed something after you submitted? Push it, and submit again: your latest submission is the one that counts.

## So what

From a stack of paper slips to a working database: requirements, design, script, data and questions. That's the whole path every app's database takes, and next you'll put a C# app on top of one.

## Key terms

- [Normalization](https://www.ask-codey.com/glossary/normalization)
- [Many-to-Many Relationship](https://www.ask-codey.com/glossary/many-to-many-relationship)
- [Junction Table](https://www.ask-codey.com/glossary/junction-table)
- [Constraint](https://www.ask-codey.com/glossary/constraint)

## Related

- [Create Database Scripts in T-SQL](https://www.ask-codey.com/lessons/foundations-of-database-design-create-database-scripts-in-t-sql)
- [Normalization](https://www.ask-codey.com/lessons/foundations-of-database-design-normalization)
- [Database Diagrams in SSMS](https://www.ask-codey.com/lessons/foundations-of-database-design-database-diagrams-in-ssms)

Source: https://www.ask-codey.com/lessons/exercise-build-it-pizzeria