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5th Highest Salary SQL
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5th Highest Salary SQL

MediumSQL · PostgreSQL

Problem

Finacle HR reporting needs to identify employees receiving the fifth-highest salary among currently active employees. Write a PostgreSQL query that returns every employee tied at that salary and includes the employee's department name.

Requirements

  1. Consider only employees whose employment_status is ACTIVE and whose salary is not NULL.
  2. Rank distinct salary levels from highest to lowest using a window function.
  3. Return all employees whose salary has rank 5, including ties.
  4. Use a LEFT JOIN so an otherwise qualifying employee is retained even if the department reference is missing. Sort the output by employee_id.

Schema

employees
ColumnTypeDescription
employee_idPKINTUnique employee identifier
employee_nameVARCHAR(100)Employee full name
department_idINTDepartment identifier
salaryNUMERIC(12,2)Annual employee salary
employment_statusVARCHAR(20)Current employment status
departments
ColumnTypeDescription
department_idPKINTUnique department identifier
department_nameVARCHAR(100)Department display name
Tablesemployeesdepartments
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