select 2nd row in Plsql

Question

Lets say I have the following table:

 SomeTable(
    id, 
    price
 )

How do I select the 2nd highest priced row from this table? Note : This has to be done in Pl/SQL, in a database agnostic way. Is it possible to do this without any loops?

1. I know how this is done using Oracle constructs like rownum or mysql constructs like limit, so I am not looking for those.

Answer 1

CREATE TABLE mytable (id NUMBER PRIMARY KEY, price NUMBER NOT NULL);
INSERT INTO mytable VALUES (1, 10);
INSERT INTO mytable VALUES (2, 20);
INSERT INTO mytable VALUES (3, 20);
INSERT INTO mytable VALUES (4, 30);

SELECT id, price 
 FROM (
       SELECT id, price, RANK() OVER (ORDER BY price DESC) AS r
         FROM mytable
      )
 WHERE r=2;

 ID PRICE
--- -----
  2    20
  3    20

Answer 2

Isn't this simple? God knows why I didn't think about it before!

select max(price) from tnum where price <> (select max(price) from tnum)