Trying to figure out top 5 land areas of the 50 states in the U.S - oracle

Question

I have a table created. With one column named states and another column called land area. I am using oracle 11g. I have looked at various questions on here and cannot find a solution. Here is what I have tried so far:
SELECT LandAreas, State
FROM ( SELECT LandAreas, State, DENSE_RANK() OVER (ORDER BY State DESC) sal_dense_rank
FROM Map )
WHERE sal_dense_rank >= 5;
This does not provide the top 5 land areas as far as number wise.
I have also tried this one but no go either:
SELECT * FROM Map order by State desc)
where rownum < 5;
Anyone have any suggestions to get me on the right track??
Here is a samle of the table
states land areas
michagan 15000
florida 25000
tennessee 10000
alabama 80000
new york 150000
california 20000
oregon 5000
texas 6000
utah 3000
nebraska 1000
Desired output from query:
States land area
new york 150000
alabama 80000
florida 25000
california 20000

Answer 1

Try:
Select * from
(SELECT State, LandAreas FROM Map ORDER BY LandAreas DESC)
where rownum < 6
Link to Fiddle

Answer 2

Use a HAVING clause and count the number state states larger:
SELECT m.state, m.landArea
FROM Map m
LEFT JOIN Map m2 on m2.landArea > m.landArea
GROUP BY m.state, m.landArea
HAVING count(*) < 5
ORDER BY m.landArea DESC
See SQLFiddle
This joins each state to every state whose area is greater, then uses a HAVING clause to return only those states where the number of larger states was less than 5.
Ties are all returned, leading to more than 5 rows in the case of a tie for 5th.
The left join is needed for the case of the largest state, which has no other larger state to join to.
The ORDER BY is optional.

Answer 3

Try something like this
select m.states,m.landarea
from map m
where (select count(‘x’) from map m2 where m2.landarea > m.landarea)<=5
order by m.landarea

Answer 4

There are two bloomers in your posted code.
You need to use landarea in the DENSE_RANK() call. At the moment you're ordering the states in reverse alphabetical order.
Your filter in the outer query is the wrong way around: you're excluding the top four results.
Here is what you need ...
SELECT LandArea, State
FROM ( SELECT LandArea
, State
, DENSE_RANK() OVER (ORDER BY landarea DESC) as area_dr
FROM Maps )
WHERE area_dr <= 5
order by area_dr;
... and here is the SQL Fiddle to prove it. (I'm going with the statement in the question that you want the top 5 biggest states and ignoring the fact that your desired result set has only four rows. But adjust the outer filter as you will).
There are three different functions for deriving top-N result sets: DENSE_RANK, RANK and ROW_NUMBER.
Using ROW_NUMBER will always guarantee you 5 rows in the result set, but you may get the wrong result if there are several states with the same land area (unlikely in this case, but other data sets will produce such clashes). So: 1,2,3,4,5
The difference between RANK and DENSE_RANK is how they handle ties. DENSE_RANK always produces a series of consecutive numbers, regardless of how many rows there are in each rank. So: 1,2,2,3,3,3,4,5
RANK on the other hand will produce a sparse series if a given rank has more than one hit. So: 1,2,2,4,4,4.
Note that each of the example result sets has a different number of rows. Which one is correct? It depends on the precise question you want to ask.
Using a sorted sub-query with the ROWNUM pseudo-column will work like the ROW_NUMBER function, but I prefer using ROW_NUMBER because it is more powerful and more error-proof.