Highest Salary in each department

Question

I have a table EmpDetails:

DeptID      EmpName   Salary
Engg        Sam       1000
Engg        Smith     2000
HR          Denis     1500
HR                  


        

Answer 1

I have like 2 approaches using one with Rank and the other with ROW_NUMBER

This is my sample data

Age          Name                                               Gender     Salary
----------- -------------------------------------------------- ---------- -----------
1           Mark                                               Male       5000
2           John                                               Male       4500
3           Pavan                                              Male       5000
4           Pam                                                Female     5500
5           Sara                                               Female     4000
6           Aradhya                                            Female     3500
7           Tom                                                Male       5500
8           Mary                                               Female     5000
9           Ben                                                Male       6500
10          Jodi                                               Female     7000
11          Tom                                                Male       5500
12          Ron                                                Male       5000
13          Ramani                                             Female     7000

So here is my first query to find max salary and the person with that max salary for each Gender

    with CTE as(
    select RANK() over(partition by Gender Order by Salary desc) as [Rank],* from employees)
    select * from CTE where [Rank]=1


Rank                 Age          Name                                               Gender     Salary
-------------------- ----------- -------------------------------------------------- ---------- -----------
1                    10          Jodi                                               Female     7000
1                    13          Ramani                                             Female     7000
1                    9           Ben                                                Male       6500

So in this case, we can see there is a tie between these 2 female employees "Jodi" and "Ramani". In that case, As a tie-breaker I want to make use of Age as a deciding factor and person with more age is supposed to be displayed

with CTE as(
select RANK() over(partition by Gender Order by Salary desc,age desc) as [Rank],* from employees)
select * from CTE where [Rank]=1

Rank                 Age          Name                                               Gender     Salary
-------------------- ----------- -------------------------------------------------- ---------- -----------
1                    13          Ramani                                             Female     7000
1                    9           Ben                                                Male       6500

Usually, in this case for finding the highest salary, it doesn't make much difference even if Rank, Dense_Rank, or Row_Number() are used. But they have some impact in other cases.