SQL SERVER – Find Nth Highest Salary of Employee – Query to Retrieve the Nth Maximum value

How to get 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, nth topmost salary from an Employee table
The following solution is for getting 6th highest salary from Employee table ,

SELECT TOP 1 salary
FROM (
SELECT DISTINCT TOP 6 salary
FROM employee
ORDER BY salary DESC) a
ORDER BY salary

You can change and use it for getting nth highest salary from Employee table as follows

SELECT TOP 1 salary
FROM (
SELECT DISTINCT TOP n salary
FROM employee
ORDER BY salary DESC) a
ORDER BY salary
where n > 1 (n is always greater than one)

Same example converted in SQL Server 2005 to work with Database AdventureWorks.
USE AdventureWorks;
GO
SELECT TOP 1 Rate
FROM (
SELECT DISTINCT TOP 4 Rate
FROM HumanResources.EmployeePayHistory
ORDER BY Rate DESC) A
ORDER BY Rate
GO