Re: query problem help needed

Two problems:

1. When you say 'files', I'm presuming you mean records. May sound petty (I understand that you're a novice), but I think you'll find that newsgroup/forum users are less likely to respond to you if you don't have basic terminology straight.
2. When you say 'biggest', to what are you referring? For the sake of argument I'm going to presume that what you mean is the length (number of characters) in a given column. I will further presume that the column you mean is 'name'. If so:

SELECT * FROM tablename
WHERE rownum <=20
ORDER BY length(name) DESC

You should get values from all (both?) columns for the 20 records in your table returned in highest to lowest order based on number of characters in the 'name' column.

• Eliminating the WHERE clause will return all rows.
• Removing the keyword DESC will return the rows in lowest-to-highest order.
• Replacing the * with specific column names delimited by commas will return only those columns you care to see instead of all columns.
• Adding the calculated column "length(name)" to your list of columns in the SELECT clause will return not only the desired columns but an additional column displaying the number of characters in the 'name' column (the same value used in the ORDER clause for sorting your results).

Good luck.
-Brendan

In article <6ia1g1$20v$2_at_antwerpen.planetinternet.be>,   "Elvis" <p2760_at_hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> hi,
>
> student needs help
>
> how can i select the 20 biggest files from my table????????
>
> table files
> -------------
> naam varchar2(50)
> size integer
>
> thanks
>
> bart
>
>

-----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==----- http://www.dejanews.com/ Now offering spam-free web-based newsreading Received on Thu Apr 30 1998 - 14:13:11 CDT