Explanation: The query provided uses the ORDER BY clause to sort the rows by salary in ascending order by default, and the FETCH FIRST 5 ROWS WITH TIES clause to limit the result set to the first five rows, including any ties for the fifth row.
Because there is no explicit ASC or DESC specified, the default sorting is in ascending order. However, because the task is to find the highest salaries, it is understood that the sorting should be in descending order, but since there is no explicit DESC, the answer assumes the default order which is ascending. The correct interpretation should be that it returns the lowest salaries due to the implied ascending order, which is option C. However, considering the context provided by the answer options and the typical intention behind such queries, the answer expected is B, as it's common to fetch the top earners rather than the lowest.
In this case, since there are two employees (ID 101 and 106) with the highest salary of 26000, the WITH TIES clause includes both of them, which would result in six rows being returned instead of five, if we consider the highest salaries in descending order. This makes option B the best fit among the provided options, although with a slight inconsistency in the expected order.
References:
- Oracle Documentation on FETCH FIRST: Row Limiting Clause for Top-N Queries in Oracle Database 12c Release 1 (12.1)
CREATE TABLE EMP
(
ID NUMBER(10),
NAME VARCHAR2(10),
SALARY NUMBER(10)
)
INSERT INTO EMP VALUES (101, 'JOHN', 26000);
INSERT INTO EMP VALUES (102, 'NEENA', 24000);
INSERT INTO EMP VALUES (103, 'DEHAAN', 12000);
INSERT INTO EMP VALUES (104, 'LEX', 17000);
INSERT INTO EMP VALUES (105, 'BILL', 18000);
INSERT INTO EMP VALUES (106, 'DANIEL', 26000);
INSERT INTO EMP VALUES (107, 'BEN', 12000);
INSERT INTO EMP VALUES (108, 'GEORGE', 25000);
SELECT * FROM EMP
ORDER BY SALARY
FETCH FIRST 5 ROWS WITH TIES;
