Second and Third Max in SQL | Dataford Interview Questions

Cognizant's project finance team maintains billing rates for delivery projects. Write a PostgreSQL query to identify the second-highest and third-highest distinct billable rates in the active project rate-card table.

Requirements

Ignore rows where billable_rate is NULL.
Treat duplicate rates as one value, so ranking must be based on distinct rates.
Return the rank position and corresponding billable rate only for ranks 2 and 3.
Sort the result by rank position in ascending order.

Schema

project_rate_cards

Column	Type	Description
rate_card_idPK	INT	Unique rate-card record identifier
project_name	VARCHAR(100)	Cognizant project name
billable_rate	DECIMAL(10,2)	Hourly billable rate
effective_date	DATE	Date the rate became effective

Your question is Second and Third Max in SQL. Start with the requirements and the one table in the Question tab.

Run and submit as often as you like. When you're ready, talk me through your approach or go straight to the code.

Problem

Requirements

Ignore rows where billable_rate is NULL.
Treat duplicate rates as one value, so ranking must be based on distinct rates.
Return the rank position and corresponding billable rate only for ranks 2 and 3.
Sort the result by rank position in ascending order.

Schema

project_rate_cards

Column	Type	Description
rate_card_idPK	INT	Unique rate-card record identifier
project_name	VARCHAR(100)	Cognizant project name
billable_rate	DECIMAL(10,2)	Hourly billable rate
effective_date	DATE	Date the rate became effective

Your question is Second and Third Max in SQL. Start with the requirements and the one table in the Question tab.

Run and submit as often as you like. When you're ready, talk me through your approach or go straight to the code.