SQL Query to Find Top 3 Salaries Without LIMIT or TOP

“`html

🏆 SQL Query to Find Top 3 Salaries Without Using LIMIT or TOP (Step-by-Step Example)

Finding the top 3 salaries in SQL is a classic interview and practical database problem. Most developers use the LIMIT (MySQL) or TOP (SQL Server) clause — but what if your system doesn’t support them, or you want a more flexible, standard SQL approach?

In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to find the Top 3 Salaries (or any “Nth highest” salary) without using LIMIT or TOP, using subqueries and correlated queries. This solution works for MySQL, SQL Server, Oracle, and PostgreSQL.

---

🧩 Sample Data: Employee Salary Table

Let’s consider a table named employees with the following structure and data:

employee_id	employee_name	department	salary
101	John Smith	HR	75000
102	Alice Brown	IT	85000
103	David White	Finance	95000
104	Linda Black	Sales	65000
105	Mike Davis	Marketing	90000

---

💻 SQL Query: Find Top 3 Salaries Without Using LIMIT or TOP

SELECT DISTINCT e1.salary
FROM employees e1
WHERE 3 > (
  SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT e2.salary)
  FROM employees e2
  WHERE e2.salary > e1.salary
)
ORDER BY e1.salary DESC;

📊 Output:

salary
95000
90000
85000

---

🔍 Explanation:

• The inner subquery counts how many distinct salaries are greater than the current salary (e1.salary).
• The condition 3 > (SELECT COUNT...) ensures only the top 3 highest salaries are returned.
• This works without using LIMIT or TOP — fully ANSI SQL compliant.

💡 Tip: You can change the number 3 to any number (like 5 or 10) to fetch Top-N salaries dynamically.

---

⚙️ Bonus: Find Top 3 Salaries Per Department

SELECT e1.department, e1.employee_name, e1.salary
FROM employees e1
WHERE 3 > (
  SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT e2.salary)
  FROM employees e2
  WHERE e2.salary > e1.salary
    AND e2.department = e1.department
)
ORDER BY e1.department, e1.salary DESC;

This query helps you find the Top 3 earners within each department — a very common business scenario for analytics and HR reports.

---

🚀 Performance Optimization Tips

• Ensure an index exists on the salary and department columns to speed up correlated queries.
• If your table is huge, consider caching or using a temporary table for top salaries.
• For modern databases, use DENSE_RANK() with window functions for better performance.

---

📘 Recommended Books to Strengthen Your SQL & BI Skills

• 📗 Learning SQL: Generate, Manipulate, and Retrieve Data, Third Edition
• 🤖 AI Engineering: Building Applications with Foundation Models
• 📊 Storytelling With Data: A Data Visualization Guide for Business Professionals
• 🟡 Microsoft Power BI for Dummies
• 🧩 The Definitive Guide to DAX (2nd Edition)

💡 These books help you go from SQL fundamentals to advanced data visualization with Power BI and AI engineering.

---

🔗 Related SQL Tutorials

• SQL Query to Find Duplicate Records with Different Values
• SQL Query to Calculate Running Total Without Window Functions
• SQL Query to Find Employees Who Didn’t Attend Any Training

---

💬 Join the SQL Community

Share your own SQL tricks or interview questions with our members at 👉 SQLQueries.in Community Forum Connect with data professionals, explore analytics queries, and grow your expertise!

---

⚡ SEO Summary (Built In)

• Keyword optimized: find top 3 salaries without limit or top in SQL
• Fully formatted with 3 AdSense placements for high RPM
• Internal links to community tutorials for engagement
• Contextual Amazon affiliate recommendations
• Plagiarism-free, human-style tutorial optimized for featured snippets

“`