Find max and second max salary for a employee table MySQL

Question

Suppose that you are given the following simple database table called Employee that has 2 columns named Employee ID and Salary:

  Employee
  Employee ID    S         


        

Answer 1

Simplest way to fetch second max salary & nth salary

select 
 DISTINCT(salary) 
from employee 
 order by salary desc 
limit 1,1

Note:

limit 0,1  - Top max salary

limit 1,1  - Second max salary

limit 2,1  - Third max salary

limit 3,1  - Fourth max salary