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SQL Queries

Each problem comes with a plain-English description, the best approach, and a clean, copy-ready query.

Second Highest Salary

MediumSubqueryAggregation

Given an Employee table, report the second highest distinct salary. If there is no second highest salary, return null.

Best Approach

Find the MAX salary, then take the MAX of all salaries strictly less than it. Wrapping in a subquery guarantees a NULL row when only one distinct salary exists.

solution.sql
SELECT MAX(salary) AS SecondHighestSalary
FROM Employee
WHERE salary < (SELECT MAX(salary) FROM Employee);