LIMIT & OFFSET SQL practice problemMediumVerified answer

Standard SQL: FETCH FIRST N ROWS ONLY

Get the top 3 highest-paid employees. The ANSI-standard form is `FETCH FIRST … ROWS ONLY` (shown as a comment in the editor); the canonical solution here uses LIMIT for cross-engine compatibility. Tie-breaker: employee_id ascending. Show first_name, last_name, salary, employee_id.

Sorting
Top-N

Interview brief

Understand the request

Data you will use

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

employees

first_nameTEXT
last_nameTEXT
salaryDECIMAL
employee_idINTEGER

Hints, when you need them

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

Hint 1

ANSI form: ORDER BY ... FETCH FIRST N ROWS ONLY. Engines: PostgreSQL, Oracle, DB2, SQL Server 2012+.

Hint 2

MySQL has NOT adopted FETCH FIRST. SQLite supports it only on builds compiled with that option (often off). LIMIT N is the universal fallback.

Hint 3

ORDER BY salary DESC, employee_id LIMIT 3 -- or FETCH FIRST 3 ROWS ONLY on PG/SQL Server

Verified SQL answer

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

Reveal solution and explanation

SELECT first_name, last_name, salary, employee_id FROM employees ORDER BY salary DESC, employee_id LIMIT 3;

Why this works

The ANSI standard is the long-term safe choice for new SQL on enterprise databases. Use LIMIT for MySQL/SQLite, FETCH FIRST on PostgreSQL/SQL Server/Oracle. This question pins the canonical solution to LIMIT so it grades consistently across engines.

Expected result

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

first_name	last_name	salary	employee_id
Mike	Johnson	80000	3
Amy	Taylor	78000	8
Kevin	Martinez	76000	13

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