SELECT the SQL statement that lists the five highest paid employees

Question

BlackTom AI · Accepted Answer

ORDER BY salary DESC sorts rows so the highest salaries appear first, and LIMIT 5 returns only the first five of those rows — together this yields the five highest-paid employees.

1) Relevant knowledge points and concepts
- SELECT first_name, last_name, salary selects the wanted columns.
- ORDER BY salary DESC sorts results by salary in descending (highest-to-lowest) order.
- LIMIT 5 restricts the result set to the first five rows after sorting.
- OFFSET N skips the first N rows (useful for paging), so OFFSET 5 would skip the top five.

2) Step-by-step reasoning
- We want the five employees with the largest salary values.
- First, order all staff rows by salary in descending order so largest salaries are at the top.
- Then take only the top five rows from that ordered list.
- Therefore use ORDER BY salary DESC followed by LIMIT 5.

3) Intermediate “calculation” steps (conceptual)
- Start: unsorted staff table.
- After ORDER BY salary DESC: rows arranged highest → lowest.
- After LIMIT 5: keep rows 1 through 5 of that ordered list.

4) Why the correct answer is correct
- ORDER BY salary DESC places the highest salaries first. LIMIT 5 then returns exactly five rows, which are precisely the top five salaries and their corresponding first_name, last_name, and salary values.

5) Why the other options are incorrect
- Any option using ORDER BY salary ASC LIMIT 5 returns the five lowest-paid employees, not the highest.
- Any option using OFFSET 5 (with or without LIMIT) either skips the top five (OFFSET 5 alone returns rows starting at position 6) or returns rows 6–10 if combined with LIMIT 5; both fail to return the top five.
- Variants that omit LIMIT or use incorrect order produce wrong results.

6) Conclusion / final confirmation
The correct SQL statement is:
SELECT first_name, last_name, salary
FROM staff
ORDER BY salary DESC
LIMIT 5;
This matches the provided correct answer.

SELECT the SQL statement that lists the five highest paid employeesSingle choice

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