Re: SQL*plus -- limiting maximum number of returned rows?

From article <1992Aug31.223520.28312_at_massey.ac.nz>, by M.W.Stern_at_massey.ac.nz (M.W. Stern):  

> > I am working on a report that is supposed to find the "top 5" items in
> > a catagory. The query returns 0 or more rows based on the selection
> > criteria, sorted in the appropriate order. Some queries return a dozen
> > or more rows, but I'm only interested in the first 5.
 

> I believe the answer to this goes something like this,
>
> SELECT value FROM table WHERE ROWNUM <= 5

But I think the poster wanted the first N rows of a result relation, not a base table? This is one instance where the generalised SQL construct

	SELECT value FROM ( SELECT etc FROM etc WHERE etc )
	WHERE ROWNUM <= 5

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