EasySQL challenge #26ORDER BYLIMIT

Lowest Salary

Find the employee with the lowest salary.

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

Find the employee with the lowest salary.

A correct answer returns 1 row with 12 columns: id, first_name, last_name, email, department, department_id, title, salary, hire_date, manager_id, city, status.

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
id	first_name	last_name	email	department	department_id	title	salary	hire_date	manager_id	city	status
37	Paul	Thomas	pthomas53@corp.io	Design	10	UI Designer	46044	2017-10-01	5	San Antonio	active

The complete result: 1 row. This is the output of the model solution on the practice database.

What you practise

Returning every column of a table with SELECT *
Sorting the result with ORDER BY
Returning only the first rows with LIMIT

Hint and approach

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

Show the hint

ORDER BY ASC LIMIT 1

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 every column with SELECT *.
Sort the result by salary.
Keep only the first row with LIMIT 1.

Model solution

Checking your session…

What to watch for

LIMIT. LIMIT without ORDER BY returns an arbitrary set of rows. LIMIT is also dialect-specific: SQL Server uses TOP and Oracle uses FETCH FIRST.
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.
SELECT *. SELECT * is fine for exploring, but its output changes whenever a column is added to the table. Queries that feed a report should name their columns.