How to get nᵗʰ highest value using plain SQL

Question

What is the simplest way to get the n^th highest value from a result set using plain SQL?

The result set would be huge, thus need to consider performance too.

Answer 1

In a general database, you can do this with a subquery and two order bys. The problem is that top/limit/rownum syntax is not standard. In some databases you would write: