How to get second-highest salary employees in a table

Question

It\'s a question I got this afternoon:

There a table contains ID, Name, and Salary of Employees, get names of the second-highest salary employees, in SQL Server

Answer 1

SELECT * from Employee 
WHERE Salary IN (SELECT MAX(Salary) 
                 FROM Employee 
                 WHERE Salary NOT IN (SELECT MAX(Salary) 
                                      FFROM employee));

Try like this..

Answer 2

Can we also use

select e2.max(sal), e2.name
from emp e2
where (e2.sal <(Select max (Salary) from empo el))
group by e2.name

Please let me know what is wrong with this approach

Answer 3

SELECT MAX(Salary) FROM Employee
WHERE Salary NOT IN (SELECT MAX(Salary) FROM Employee)

Answer 4

How about a CTE?

;WITH Salaries AS
(
    SELECT Name, Salary,
       DENSE_RANK() OVER(ORDER BY Salary DESC) AS 'SalaryRank'
    FROM 
        dbo.Employees
)
SELECT Name, Salary
FROM Salaries  
WHERE SalaryRank = 2

DENSE_RANK() will give you all the employees who have the second highest salary - no matter how many employees have the (identical) highest salary.

Answer 5

select MAX(Salary) from Employee WHERE Salary NOT IN (select MAX(Salary) from Employee );

Answer 6

SELECT name
FROM employee
WHERE salary =
(SELECT MIN(salary) 
  FROM (SELECT TOP (2) salary
  FROM employee
  ORDER BY salary DESC) )