What is Top Keyword?
- Top Keyword in SQL is used to retrieve the data from the top of the table.
- It retrieves only the first few set of rows from the top of the desired table.
When to use Top Keyword?
- When you want to retrieve a number of records from the top.
- When you want to retrieve a specific percentage of rows from the top.
Syntax:
SELECT [TOP n [PERCENT] [WITH TIES] ] columnNames
FROM TableName
WHERE SearchCondition
[ORDER BY columnNames]
where,
- TOP is a keyword used to retrieve rows from top of the table.
- n is the number of rows to be retrieved.
- PERCENT keyword can be used with n if we want to retrieve "n" percent of rows.
- WITH TIES specifies the result can contain matching rows too.
- ORDER BY clause specifies the order in which the rows should be returned.
Example:
- Select TOP 10 * From Students;
This query retrieves the Top 10 rows from the Students table.
- Select TOP 10 PERCENT * From Students;
This query retrieves the Top 10% rows of the Students table.
- Select TOP 5 * From Students
- Where Marks>80;
This query retrieves the Top 5 records from the Students table where the Marks are greater than 80.
- Select Top 10 WITH TIES StudentID, StudentName, Marks, City From Students
- Where Marks>80
- ORDER BY StudentID;
This query retrieves the Top 10 records from the Students table along with ties where Marks are greater than 80 and will sort the result in ascending order of StudentID.