problem with ROWNUM

[Quoted] OK. I got more questions! :)

I have a very complicated query that have this format:

select blah blah
from blah, blah, blah
where

   (a complicated predicate here) AND (ROWNUM <= :maxRows) order by attribute DESC;

The thing is that SQL stops when it reaches the maxRows rows, and THEN it sorts the rows. I got this problem since I need to return the rows ordered by date in descending order, but the query doesn't return the LAST date in the tables, because of the problem with ROWNUM.

What I need to do is get all the rows sorted, and THEN select the first maxRows.

How do I do that?

Regards,
Gabriel

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