How to find third or nᵗʰ maximum salary from salary table?

Question

How to find third or n^th maximum salary from salary table(EmpID, EmpName, EmpSalary) in optimized way?

Answer 1

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().