Resolve Ties for Top-10 Users in SQL Query
Company: Meta
Role: Data Scientist
Category: Data Manipulation (SQL/Python)
Difficulty: medium
Interview Round: Onsite
Oculus_Scores
+---------+-------+
| user_id | score |
+---------+-------+
| u1 | 95 |
| u2 | 92 |
| u3 | 90 |
| u4 | 90 |
| u5 | 88 |
+---------+-------+
##### Scenario
Meta DSPA onsite – SQL screen on Oculus dataset; need top-10 leaderboard when ranks 10 and 11 are tied.
##### Question
Table Oculus_Scores(user_id, score) holds daily user scores. Write a SQL query that returns exactly the top-10 users by score even when users ranked 10 and 11 have identical scores. Explain your logic.
##### Hints
Use DENSE_RANK vs ROW_NUMBER; trim with LIMIT or sub-query so only first 10 rows are emitted after ordering.
Quick Answer: This question evaluates proficiency in SQL ranking and tie-resolution techniques for generating deterministic top-N leaderboards, focusing on handling identical scores while producing an exact set of rows.