Retrieve second highest value from a table

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Question: How can I retrieve the second highest salary amount from a salary table?

Answer: To retrieve the second highest salary from a salary table, you could run the following query: (please note that the subquery is sorted in descending order)

SELECT salary_amount
FROM	(select salary2.*, rownum rnum from
		(select * from salary ORDER BY salary_amount DESC) salary2
	where rownum <= 2 )
WHERE rnum >= 2;

If you wanted to retrieve all fields from the salary table for the second highest salary, you could run the following query: (please note that the subquery is sorted in descending order)

SELECT *
FROM	(select salary2.*, rownum rnum from
		(select * from salary ORDER BY salary_amount DESC) salary2
	where rownum <= 2 )
WHERE rnum >= 2;