Final answer:
The purpose of the SQL query is to retrieve data from the 'invoice' table for customers whose country starts with the letter 'u'.
Step-by-step explanation:
The purpose of the SQL query "select invoice.* from invoice inner join customer on customer.customer_id = invoice.customer_id where country like 'u%';" is to retrieve data from the 'invoice' table for customers whose country starts with the letter 'u'.
The query first uses the INNER JOIN statement to combine the 'invoice' table with the 'customer' table based on the matching 'customer_id' column. It then applies the WHERE clause to filter the results, selecting only the rows where the 'country' column starts with 'u' using the LIKE operator.
By using invoice.* in the SELECT statement, the query retrieves all columns from the 'invoice' table that match the specified conditions.