Retrieve second highest value from a table

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;