SQL Quest › SQL Interview Questions › Querying Basics
Top 5 Earners
A board prep deck wants a one-slide answer: the five highest-paid employees in the company, with their department.
Show name, department, salary. Order by salary descending. Limit 5.
ORDER BY ... DESC LIMIT N is the simplest top-N pattern in SQL. It returns *some* row when there's a salary tie at the boundary — the engine picks arbitrarily. If you need deterministic results across ties, add a second sort key (like ORDER BY salary DESC, name ASC). For "top N with ties included", you need window functions (RANK or DENSE_RANK), which is an intermediate-level pattern.
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Schema
employees
| emp_id | name | department | position | salary | hire_date | manager_id | performance_rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Alice Johnson | Engineering | Senior Developer | 95000 | 2019-03-15 | 5 | 4.5 |
| 2 | Bob Smith | Engineering | Developer | 75000 | 2020-06-01 | 1 | 3.8 |
| 3 | Carol Williams | Marketing | Marketing Manager | 85000 | 2018-09-20 | NULL | 4.2 |
Expected output: 5 rows, highest salary first
Hint
SELECT, ORDER BY, LIMIT, and open the hint there if you stall.Concepts
SELECT ORDER BY LIMIT
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