EasySQL challenge #12ORDER BYLIMIT

Find the Top 5 Most Expensive Products

Return the five products with the highest price.

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

Solve This SQL Challenge

The task

Find 5 most expensive products.

A correct answer returns 5 rows with 10 columns: id, name, category, price, cost, stock, sku, status, rating, review_count.

Tables used in this challenge

`products` 120 rows

id INTEGER (PK) · name TEXT · category TEXT · price REAL · cost REAL · stock INTEGER · sku TEXT · status TEXT · rating REAL · review_count INTEGER

First 3 rows of the products table
id	name	category	price	cost	stock	sku	status	rating	review_count
1	Play Kitchen Deluxe	Toys	1786.38	589.51	257	SKU-000001	active	4	57
2	Micro-Cut Paper Shredder 8-Sheet	Office Supplies	907.93	281.46	131	SKU-000002	active	2.5	447
3	4K Dual Dash Camera	Automotive	568.89	204.8	176	SKU-000003	active	4.1	29

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	name	category	price	cost	stock	sku	status	rating	review_count
68	Single Origin Coffee 500g	Food & Beverage	1991.75	657.28	195	SKU-000068	active	4.7	131
108	Succulent Plant Set	Home & Garden	1990.16	616.95	107	SKU-000108	discontinued	4	224
110	The Manager's Path	Books	1979.28	989.64	48	SKU-000110	active	4.9	381
61	2000A Jump Starter Pack	Automotive	1948.86	915.96	338	SKU-000061	active	4.3	43
28	Japanese Green Tea 50 bags	Food & Beverage	1937.51	620	488	SKU-000028	active	2.7	5

The complete result: 5 rows. 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 + LIMIT

Show the step-by-step approach

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

Read from the products table.
Return every column with SELECT *.
Sort the result by price descending.
Keep only the first 5 rows with LIMIT.

Model solution

Checking your session…

What to watch for

A top-N query is a sort followed by LIMIT. SQL Server writes it as SELECT TOP 5, and Oracle as FETCH FIRST 5 ROWS ONLY. If two products tie for fifth place, LIMIT keeps one of them arbitrarily.

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.

Solve This SQL Challenge

Get the 5 Most Recent OrdersSimilar levelEasy
Select All Columns from a Table with LIMITSimilar levelEasy
Find the Top 5 Customers by Total SpendHarderMedium
Sort Products by Price, Lowest FirstSimilar levelEasy
Sort Employees by Salary, Highest FirstSimilar levelEasy

Same technique, other tables

More practice on this pattern with different columns:

Keep learning

Lesson: LIMIT / TOP / FETCH
Lesson: ORDER BY
Lesson: The BIG 6 SQL Clauses
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SQL Playground: run any query on the same database