SQL Second Largest Salary | Dataford Interview Questions

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

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Problem

Sopra Steria's people analytics team needs to identify employees earning the second-highest distinct salary among currently active employees. Write a PostgreSQL query that returns every employee tied at that salary, including department information when available.

Requirements

Consider only active employees with a non-null salary.
Determine the second-highest distinct salary, so employees tied at the highest salary do not occupy two ranking positions.
Return the employee name, salary, and department name. Preserve employees whose department reference does not match a department record.
Order the results by employee name ascending.

Schema

employees

Column	Type	Description
employee_idPK	INT	Unique employee identifier
employee_name	VARCHAR(100)	Employee's full name
salary	NUMERIC(10,2)	Annual employee salary
department_id	INT	Reference to the employee's department
is_active	BOOLEAN	Whether the employee is currently active

departments

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