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SQL Server FAQ - "TOP" - Return the Top 5 Rows from a SELECT Query

By: FYIcenter.com

(Continued from previous topic...)

How To Return the Top 5 Rows from a SELECT Query?

If you want the query to return only the first 5 rows, you can use the "TOP 5" clause. The TOP clause takes one parameter to indicate how many top rows to return. The following statements returns the first 5 rows and 3 rows from the fyi_links:

SELECT TOP 5 id, url, counts, tag FROM fyi_links 
   ORDER BY counts DESC
GO
id      url                     counts  tag
102     dba.fyicenter.com       972     DBA
105     www.oracle.com          960     DBA
107     www.winrunner.com       828     SQA
103     sqa.fyicenter.com       728     SQA
106     www.php.net             439     DEV

SELECT TOP 3 id, url, counts, tag FROM fyi_links 
   ORDER BY counts DESC
GO
id      url                     counts  tag
102     dba.fyicenter.com       972     DBA
105     www.oracle.com          960     DBA
107     www.winrunner.com       828     SQA

(Continued on next topic...)

1. How To Join Two Tables in a Single Query?
2. How To Write a Query with an Inner Join?
3. How To Define and Use Table Alias Names?
4. How To Write a Query with a Left Outer Join?
5. How To Write a Query with a Right Outer Join?
6. How To Write a Query with a Full Outer Join?
7. How To Write an Inner Join with the WHERE Clause?
8. How To Name Query Output Columns?
9. What Is a Subquery in a SELECT Query Statement?
10. How To Use Subqueries with the IN Operators?
11. How To Use Subqueries with the EXISTS Operators?
12. How To Use Subqueries in the FROM Clause?
13. How To Count Groups Returned with the GROUP BY Clause?
14. How To Return the Top 5 Rows from a SELECT Query?
15. How To Return the Second 5 Rows?
16. How To Use UNION to Merge Outputs from Two Queries Together?
17. How To Use ORDER BY with UNION Operators