Question

we want to have the second biggest element. We first use ANY to exclude the biggest one. Then we use all to select the biggest. However when we run this query, it shows the biggest and not the second one. Why?

SELECT * 
FROM bestelling
WHERE totaalprijs > ALL
(
    SELECT totaalprijs
    FROM bestelling
    WHERE totaalprijs < ANY
    (
        SELECT totaalprijs
        FROM bestelling

    )
)

elements in the table:

157.00
5.00
82.80
15.00
20.00
20.00

Answer 1

The problem is the “>” in your outermost query. If you break this down in language, from the inside out, you’re saying:

• From all the rows in the table …
• Get me any where totaalprijs is less than some other value (i.e. all records except records with the max value in the table, 157.00) …
• Then, get me any values that are bigger than all the records in the previous table. Which is, naturally, just the biggest one.

If you just want the second biggest value, you can replace that outer clause with a MAX statement:

SELECT max(totaalprijs)
FROM 
(
    SELECT totaalprijs
    FROM bestelling
    WHERE totaalprijs < ANY
    (
        SELECT totaalprijs
        FROM bestelling
    )
) M

Or, if you want all records that bear that “second biggest” value, you can use:

SELECT * FROM bestelling 
WHERE totaalprijs = 
(
    SELECT max(totaalprijs)
    FROM bestelling
    WHERE totaalprijs < ANY
    (
        SELECT totaalprijs
        FROM bestelling
    )
)