How to find top three salary of emp table?

Question

Hi,
I am trying to get top 3 salaries using MAX() in sql but it is only showing 1 row not 3.The following qury showing only the 3rd highest.
SELECT MAX(Sal) ThirdHighest FROM emp
WHERE Sal < (SELECT MAX(Sal) FROM emp
WHERE Sal =(SELECT MAX(Sal) FROM emp
WHERE Sal <(SELECT MAX(Sal) FROM emp)))
I dont want to use the following method.
SELECT department_id dept, first_name || ' ' || last_name name, salary
FROM (
SELECT department_id, first_name, last_name,
MAX(salary) OVER (PARTITION BY department_id) dept_max_sal, salary
FROM employees e
) WHERE salary = dept_max_sal;
Kindly help to create query using only "max()" for top 3 salaries.

Answer 1

947459 wrote:
Hi,
I am trying to get top 3 salaries using MAX() in sql but it is only showing 1 row not 3.The following qury showing only the 3rd highest.
SELECT MAX(Sal) ThirdHighest FROM emp
WHERE Sal < (SELECT MAX(Sal) FROM emp
WHERE Sal =(SELECT MAX(Sal) FROM emp
WHERE Sal <(SELECT MAX(Sal) FROM emp)))
I dont want to use the following method.
SELECT department_id dept, first_name || ' ' || last_name name, salary
FROM (
SELECT department_id, first_name, last_name,
MAX(salary) OVER (PARTITION BY department_id) dept_max_sal, salary
FROM employees e
) WHERE salary = dept_max_sal;
Kindly help to create query using only "max()" for top 3 salaries.Why? Why not use what Oracle provides for doing top N queries?
SQL> ed
Wrote file afiedt.buf
  1  select empno, ename, sal
  2  from (
  3        select empno, ename, sal, dense_rank() over (partition by 1 order by sal desc) as r from emp
  4       )
  5* where r <= 3
SQL> /
     EMPNO ENAME             SAL
      7839 KING             5000
      7788 SCOTT            3000
      7902 FORD             3000
      7566 JONES            2975Using just the MAX function alone will make it harder for you and is completely unnecessary.