Problem

Given a table of employee data, write a SQL query to find the top 5 employees with the highest salaries.
Example input:
| employee_id | name  | salary |
| ------------|-------|--------|
| 1           | John  | 100000 |
| 2           | Jane  | 120000 |
| 3           | Smith | 90000  |
Expected output:
| employee_id | name  | salary |
| ------------|-------|--------|
| 2           | Jane  | 120000 |
| 1           | John  | 100000 |

Solution

SELECT employee_id, name, salary
FROM employee
ORDER BY salary DESC
LIMIT 5;

/*

The solution above is optimal because it uses the ORDER BY and LIMIT clauses to sort the table by salary in descending order and then limit the results to the top 5 salaries.

*/