How to get second largest or third largest entry from a table

Question

Can anyone please tell me how to find out the N th largest entry from a table in Oracle?

Like for largest we can use MAX(column_name) i

Answer 1

To get second largest salary use this:

select salary from 
  (select s2.salary,rownum rm from
     (select distinct salary from employees order by salary desc)
  s2 where rownum<=2)
where rm >= 2