How to get top "N'th Maximum" value alone from a table in MS SQL?

Question

Assume that there is a 'Employee' table with salary as one of the columns.

I want to get the 'Top N'th maximum salary alone from the table.

How this can be fetched easily?

Answer 1

SELECT TOP N employee.name, employee.salary
FROM employee
ORDER BY employee.salary DESC

?

Answer 2

SELECT TOP 1 Salary FROM
(SELECT TOP(N) Salary FROM Employee
ORDER BY Salary DESC) E

Answer 3

SELECT TOP 1 employee.name, employee.salary from (
    SELECT TOP N employee.name, employee.salary
    FROM employee
    ORDER BY employee.salary DESC )

This gives the Nth from the top.

Answer 4

WITH    (
        SELECT  e.*, ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY employee.salary DESC) AS rn
        FROM    employee
        ) AS q
SELECT  *
FROM    q
WHERE   rn = @n

Answer 5

 SELECT TOP 1 * FROM Employees
    ORDER BY Employees.Salary DESC