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Asked: 2026-05-10T14:55:59+00:00

Consider the Oracle emp table. I’d like to get the employees with the top

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Consider the Oracle emp table. I’d like to get the employees with the top salary with department = 20 and job = clerk. Also assume that there is no ’empno’ column, and that the primary key involves a number of columns. You can do this with:

select * from scott.emp where deptno = 20 and job = 'CLERK' and sal =  (select max(sal) from scott.emp             where deptno = 20 and job = 'CLERK')

This works, but I have to duplicate the test deptno = 20 and job = ‘CLERK’, which I would like to avoid. Is there a more elegant way to write this, maybe using a group by? BTW, if this matters, I am using Oracle.

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  1. The following is slightly over-engineered, but is a good SQL pattern for ‘top x’ queries.

    SELECT   *  FROM   scott.emp WHERE   (deptno,job,sal) IN  (SELECT     deptno,    job,    max(sal)    FROM     scott.emp   WHERE     deptno = 20     and job = 'CLERK'   GROUP BY     deptno,    job   )

    Also note that this will work in Oracle and Postgress (i think) but not MS SQL. For something similar in MS SQL see question SQL Query to get latest price

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