How to find third or nth maximum salary from salar

Question

How to find third or nth maximum salary from salary table(EmpID,EmpName,EmpSalary) in Optimized way?

Answer 1

Use ROW_NUMBER(if you want a single) or DENSE_RANK(for all related rows):

WITH CTE AS
(
    SELECT EmpID, EmpName, EmpSalary,
           RN = ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY EmpSalary DESC)
    FROM dbo.Salary
)
SELECT EmpID, EmpName, EmpSalary
FROM CTE
WHERE RN = @NthRow

Answer 2

This is one of the popular question in any SQL interview. I am going to write down different queries to find out the nth highest value of a column.

I have created a table named “Emloyee” by running the below script.

CREATE TABLE Employee([Eid] [float] NULL,[Ename] [nvarchar](255) NULL,[Basic_Sal] [float] NULL)

Now I am going to insert 8 rows into this table by running below insert statement.

insert into Employee values(1,'Neeraj',45000)
insert into Employee values(2,'Ankit',5000)
insert into Employee values(3,'Akshay',6000)
insert into Employee values(4,'Ramesh',7600)
insert into Employee values(5,'Vikas',4000)
insert into Employee values(7,'Neha',8500)
insert into Employee values(8,'Shivika',4500)
insert into Employee values(9,'Tarun',9500)

Now we will find out 3rd highest Basic_sal from the above table using different queries. I have run the below query in management studio and below is the result.

select * from Employee order by Basic_Sal desc

We can see in the above image that 3rd highest Basic Salary would be 8500. I am writing 3 different ways of doing the same. By running all three mentioned below queries we will get same result i.e. 8500.

First Way: - Using row number function

select Ename,Basic_sal
from(
            select Ename,Basic_Sal,ROW_NUMBER() over (order by Basic_Sal desc) as rowid from Employee
      )A
where rowid=2

Answer 3

MySQL tested solution, assume N = 4:

select min(CustomerID) from (SELECT distinct CustomerID FROM Customers order by CustomerID desc LIMIT 4) as A;

Another example:

select min(country) from (SELECT distinct country FROM Customers order by country desc limit 3);

Answer 4

//you can find n' th salary from table.if you want to retrive 2nd highest salary then put n=2,if 3rd hs then out n=3 as so on..

SELECT *  FROM tablename t1 
WHERE (N-1) = (SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT(t2.Salary)) 
 FROM tablename t2
WHERE t2.Salary > t1.Salary)

Answer 5

select min(salary) 
from (select salary 
      from employee 
      where rownum < n+1 
      order by salary desc);

Answer 6

In 2008 we can use ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY EmpSalary DESC) to get a rank without ties that we can use.

For example we can get the 8th highest this way, or change @N to something else or use it as a parameter in a function if you like.

DECLARE @N INT = 8;
WITH rankedSalaries AS
(
SELECT
EmpID
,EmpName
,EmpSalary,
,RN = ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY EmpSalary DESC)
FROM salary
)
SELECT
EmpID
,EmpName
,EmpSalary
FROM rankedSalaries
WHERE RN = @N;

In SQL Server 2012 as you might know this is performed more intuitively using LAG().