MediumSQL challenge #181ORDER BY

Sort Employees by Department, Then by Salary

List employees grouped by department alphabetically, highest salary first within each.

The challenge runs on the SQLabHub practice database (SQLite) and uses the employees table. You can solve it in the browser, with nothing to install.

Solve This SQL Challenge

The task

Sort employees by salary descending with department.

A correct answer returns 120 rows with 3 columns: department, first_name, salary.

Tables used in this challenge

`employees` 120 rows

id INTEGER (PK) · first_name TEXT · last_name TEXT · email TEXT · department TEXT · department_id INTEGER · title TEXT · salary REAL · hire_date TEXT · manager_id INTEGER · city TEXT · status TEXT

First 3 rows of the employees table
id	first_name	last_name	email	department	department_id	title	salary	hire_date	manager_id	city	status
1	William	Lewis	wlewis18@corp.io	Customer Success	7	Senior CS Manager	61774	2022-07-24	NULL	San Diego	active
2	John	Miller	jmiller51@corp.io	Legal	8	Paralegal	191694	2021-08-09	NULL	San Diego	active
3	Daniel	Rivera	drivera50@corp.io	Engineering	1	VP Engineering	135067	2016-06-06	NULL	Houston	active

The first rows of each table are shown. See how all the tables relate on the database schema page.

Expected output

Expected output of the challenge
department	first_name	salary
Customer Success	Nancy	203999
Customer Success	Maria	191120
Customer Success	Barbara	188280
Customer Success	Melissa	178391
Customer Success	Dorothy	165118

First 5 of 120 rows. This is the output of the model solution on the practice database.

What you practise

Choosing exactly which columns a query returns
Sorting the result with ORDER BY

Hint and approach

Try the challenge first. Open these only when you need them.

Show the hint

ORDER BY salary

Show the step-by-step approach

How the model solution is built, in the order the database evaluates it:

Read from the employees table.
Return only the columns department, first_name and salary.
Sort the result by department, then salary descending.

Model solution

Checking your session…

What to watch for

Each sort column carries its own direction: department is ascending by default and only salary is marked DESC. The result reads like a ranking inside each department, without a window function.

ORDER BY. Without ORDER BY the row order is not guaranteed, even if it looks stable. Rows that tie on the sort columns can come back in any order.