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

SELECT DISTINCT (a.sal) FROM EMP A WHERE &N = (
  SELECT COUNT (DISTINCT (b.sal)) FROM EMP B WHERE a.sal<=b.sal
);

Replace &N with you desired number. For example, 2 will give you the second largest salary.

If you are using PL/SQL, just execute the statement. It will prompt for N.