Limiting Search Results
Written by Eric Smith, Northstar Computer Systems LLC
If you have a query that you know will return a lot of records, you can use the SQL TOP keyword to limit the number of records that are returned. I will often do this when I want a small sample of the data from the table. Here's an example query:
SELECT TOP 10 * FROM Customers
This returns the top 10 rows from the customers table with all their fields. Unfortunately, you're not guaranteed to get a consistent return. I'd suggest adding on a sort (ORDER BY) of some sort to guarantee the results you get back. For instance, if I wanted the last five records added to a table, I might do this:
SELECT TOP 5 * FROM Content ORDER BY CreationDate DESC
Keywords: [
SQL
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Publication Date: 11/1/2000
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