Query for retrieving top two rows from a table in SQL Server

Question

I have a table called Employee with the following fields:

• EmpID
• Salary
• Name

I want to get top two employees with maximum salary. How do I write this query ?

Answer 1

SQL Server 2000+:

  SELECT TOP 2
         e.*
    FROM EMPLOYEE e
ORDER BY e.salary DESC

MySQL & Postgres:

  SELECT e.*
    FROM EMPLOYEE e
ORDER BY e.salary DESC
   LIMIT 2

Oracle:

SELECT x.*
  FROM (SELECT e.*,
               ROWNUM as rn
          FROM EMPLOYEE e
      ORDER BY e.salary DESC) x
 WHERE x.rn <= 2

• Oracle: ROW_NUMBER vs ROWNUM

Answer 2

Try this ..

SELECT * from Employee  order by Salary  desc limit 2 ;