Write a simple SQL query to fetch the third highest salary from the employee table.

One concise way to get the third highest distinct salary is to use a window function:

SELECT salary

FROM (

SELECT salary, DENSE_RANK() OVER (ORDER BY salary DESC) AS rnk

FROM employee

) AS ranked

WHERE rnk = 3;

Explanation:

• The inner query assigns a dense rank to each distinct salary in descending order.
• The outer query filters for rank 3, which corresponds to the third highest salary.

If your database does not support window functions, you can use a subquery with LIMIT/OFFSET (MySQL) or OFFSET (PostgreSQL):

SELECT DISTINCT salary

FROM employee

ORDER BY salary DESC

LIMIT 1 OFFSET 2;

Both approaches return the third highest unique salary. Complexity is O(n log n) due to sorting, but the database engine optimizes the query internally.