LIMIT & OFFSET SQL practice problemEasyVerified answer

LIMIT 1 for the Single Latest Row

Return the single highest-paid employee.

  • CTEs
  • Sorting
  • Top-N

Interview brief

Understand the request

Executive reporting analyst The single-record executive summary card shows only the highest-paid employee.

Return the most recently hired employee. If two rows tie on hire_date, prefer the larger employee_id. Show first_name, last_name, hire_date, employee_id.

Return

  • Return first_name, last_name, and salary.

Constraints

  • Use LIMIT 1 with ORDER BY salary DESC.

Data you will use

Review the relevant tables before deciding how to join, filter, or aggregate them.

employees

  • first_nameTEXT
  • last_nameTEXT
  • hire_dateDATE
  • employee_idINTEGER

Hints, when you need them

Open one clue at a time so you still do the reasoning.

Hint 1

LIMIT 1 + ORDER BY <metric> DESC = "the row with the maximum metric". Use ASC for "the row with the minimum".

Hint 2

Without a tie-breaker, "the most recent" becomes whichever tied row the engine happens to return first.

Hint 3

ORDER BY hire_date DESC, employee_id DESC LIMIT 1

Verified SQL answer

Attempt the problem first, then compare structure and reasoning—not just syntax.

Reveal solution and explanation
SELECT first_name, last_name, hire_date, employee_id FROM employees ORDER BY hire_date DESC, employee_id DESC LIMIT 1;

Why this works

LIMIT 1 is a clean way to get a single extreme value. The window-function alternative (`ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY ...)`) is more flexible — it can return the per-group extreme without correlated subqueries.

Expected result

Use this output to verify values, aliases, ordering, and row count.

first_namelast_namehire_dateemployee_id
EmmaThomas2023-01-1010

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