SQL SELECT TOP Clause
SQL SELECT TOP clause is used to retrieve top N records or by percentage value from specified table(s) and limits the records by mentioned value in the query. If you want to fetch records in a specific order then you can mention ORDER BY clause in conjunction with SELECT TOP clause otherwise you will get random TOP N records from table.
Syntax
SELECT TOP <Number | Percent> ColumnName(s)
FROM TableName
We will take few examples to understand SELECT TOP clause. We will use Student table and fetch top 10 records from the table as given below.
SELECT TOP 10 *FROM Student
Now we will select specific columns FirstName, LastName and Country from Student table.
SELECT TOP 10 FirstName, LastName, Country FROM Student
Here, we will see example for TOP N PERCENT of Student table as shown below.
SELECT TOP 8 PERCENT * FROM Student
Now we will use ORDER BY clause with TOP N records in Student table so that we can get sorted records.
SELECT TOP 10 FirstName, LastName, Country FROM Student ORDER BY LastName DESC
Reference: Manzoor Siddiqui [www.SQLServerLog.com]
