SQL SELECT TOP Keyword

The SQL SELECT TOP keyword is used to fetch specified number or percentage of records from a table. This is useful when the table contains thousands of records and returning a large dataset can impact performance.

Note: TOP keyword is not supported in all database. For example MySQL supports the LIMIT keyword and Oracle uses ROWNUM keyword to fetch limited number of records.

Syntax

The syntax for using SELECT TOP keyword is given below:

SELECT TOP number|percent column1, column2, ...
FROM table_name
WHERE condition(s);

Example:

Consider a database containing a table called Employee with the following records:

• To fetch top 3 records from the Employee table, the SQL query is:

  SELECT TOP 3 * FROM Employee;
  

  
  

  This will produce the result as shown below:

  EmpID	Name	City	Age	Salary
  1	John	London	25	3000
  2	Marry	New York	24	2750
  3	Jo	Paris	27	2800

• In SQL Server and MS Access, the above result can also be achieved by using PERCENT keyword in the query.

  SELECT TOP 50 PERCENT * FROM Employee;
  

  
  

  This result of the following code will be:

  EmpID	Name	City	Age	Salary
  1	John	London	25	3000
  2	Marry	New York	24	2750
  3	Jo	Paris	27	2800