SQL Queries for Ranking | Dataford Interview Questions

HSBC wants to review compensation among active employees across its business divisions. Write a PostgreSQL query that ranks employees within each division and returns the highest and second-highest distinct annual salaries, including ties.

Requirements

Join employees to divisions and consider only active employees with a non-NULL salary.
Use a window function to rank salaries independently within each division.
Return all employees whose rank is 1 or 2, ordered by division, rank, and employee name.

Schema

divisions

Column	Type	Description
division_idPK	INT	Unique identifier for an HSBC business division
division_name	VARCHAR(100)	Business division name

employees

Column	Type	Description
employee_idPK	INT	Unique employee identifier
employee_name	VARCHAR(100)	Employee's full name
division_id	INT	References divisions.division_id
annual_salary	NUMERIC(12,2)	Annual salary in GBP
is_active	BOOLEAN	Whether the employee is currently active

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