SQL Top Vendor Payments | Dataford Interview Questions

Write a SQL query to find the top three vendor payments by volume for each month.

Treat volume as the total payment amount per vendor per calendar month. Include only payments linked to a vendor record. Break ties by vendor_id in ascending order.

Output

One row per included vendor and month, with payment_month, vendor_id, vendor_name, total_payment_volume, and monthly_rank.
Include no more than three vendors per month.
Order by payment_month ascending, then monthly_rank ascending.

Schema

vendors

Column	Type	Description
vendor_idPK	INT	Unique vendor identifier
vendor_name	VARCHAR(120)	Vendor's display name

payments

Column	Type	Description
payment_idPK	INT	Unique payment identifier
vendor_id	INT	Vendor associated with the payment
payment_date	DATE	Date the payment was issued
amount	NUMERIC(12,2)	Payment amount

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