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- SELECT…TOP clause in SQL is used to specify the number of rows or percentage of rows to be selected from a table by SELECT query.
- This TOP clause is very useful in larger tables where there is a chance for performance issue while selecting thousands of records. So, we can select only a few records from the larger tables as per our need.Syntax for SQL select statement is given below.
SQL Syntax for SELECT…TOP statement:
| Syntax for SELECT…TOP clause using number of rows to be selected | SELECT TOP number * FROM table_name; |
| Syntax for SELECT…TOP clause using percentage of rows to be selected | SELECT TOP number PERCENT * FROM table_name; |
Note: * is a wild card which selects all columns from a table.
Please consider the following table with few records as given below.
Table name (for example): student
Column names in this table: Student_ID, Student_name, City and Age
Available records: 4 rows
Example1: how to use SQL SELECT…TOP by number:
To select only top 3 records/rows from this table, please execute below query. This query will fetch only 1st three records available in this table:
SQL query:
SELECT TOP 3 * from student;
SQL query Output:
Example2: how to use SQL SELECT…TOP by Percentage:
- To select only 50% of records/rows from this table (i.e. If a table contains 100 records, then 50% means 50 records and if a table contains 50 records, then 50% means 25 records etc.),
- Please execute below query. This query will fetch only 1st two records available in this table which is 50%:
SQL query:
SELECT TOP 50 PERCENT * from student;
SQL query Output:
