Second Largest Value in SQL | Dataford Interview Questions

Your question is Second Largest Value in SQL. Start with the requirements and the two tables on the right.

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Problem

Newton School of Technology wants to identify active employees whose salary is the second-highest distinct salary in the organization. Write a PostgreSQL query that returns every employee tied at that salary, along with their department.

Requirements

Consider only employees with employment_status = 'active' and a non-NULL salary.
Rank distinct salary levels from highest to lowest, preserving ties.
Return all employees with salary rank 2, including their employee ID, name, salary, and department name.
Sort the output by employee_id in ascending order.

Schema

employees

Column	Type	Description
employee_idPK	INT	Unique employee identifier
employee_name	VARCHAR(100)	Employee full name
department_id	INT	References departments.department_id
salary	DECIMAL(10,2)	Annual employee salary
employment_status	VARCHAR(20)	Current employment status

departments

Column	Type	Description
department_idPK	INT	Unique department identifier
department_name	VARCHAR(100)	Department name