Re: First 20 records only

From: Mark J. Bobak <mark.NOSPAM_at_bobak.net>
Date: Sun, 10 Jun 2001 07:08:02 GMT
Message-ID: <20010610.030802.1244316437.29713@bobak.net>

In article <3b21ef8f$0$12246$cc9e4d1f_at_news.dial.pipex.com>, "Niall Litchfield" <niall.litchfield_at_dial.pipex.com> wrote:

> "Jack" <No_at_Mail.Please> wrote in message
> news:0n2U6.69731$662.285365_at_news1-hme0...

>> Hi
>> Can you please tell me how to 'select' only (the first) 20 records of a
>> table?
>> is it ;
>>       select * from tableA sample (20)

>
> various people have given you the where rownum < 21 answer. This is
> absolutely fine if you only want 20 records and do not care which they
> are. If you do care which they are (the top 20 sales for example)
> you'll need to look on deja for the answers in this group to the
> equivalent of TOP. 8i and above the syntax is (from memory)
>
> select * from (select ... from table order by key_column desc) where
> rownum < 21;
>
> I believe that Jonathan Lewis has pointed out that order by in an inline
> view has got back-ported to some patch releases of 7.3 as well.

Backported to 7.3??? Are you kidding? It was an 8i feature, not backported to 8.0, but it got into 8i??

That makes no sense at all to me.

-Mark Received on Sun Jun 10 2001 - 02:08:02 CDT