The SQL TOP clause is used to fetch a TOP N number or X percent records from a table.

Note − All the databases do not support the TOP clause. For example MySQL supports the LIMIT clause to fetch limited number of records while Oracle uses the ROWNUM command to fetch a limited number of records.

Syntax

The basic syntax of the TOP clause with a SELECT statement would be as follows.

SELECT TOP number|percent column_name(s)

FROM table_name

WHERE [condition]

Example

Consider the CUSTOMERS table having the following records −

+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+

| ID | NAME     | AGE | ADDRESS   | SALARY   |

+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+

|  1 | Ramesh   |  32 | Ahmedabad |  2000.00 |

|  2 | Khilan   |  25 | Delhi     |  1500.00 |

|  3 | kaushik  |  23 | Kota      |  2000.00 |

|  4 | Chaitali |  25 | Mumbai    |  6500.00 |

|  5 | Hardik   |  27 | Bhopal    |  8500.00 |

|  6 | Komal    |  22 | MP        |  4500.00 |

|  7 | Muffy    |  24 | Indore    | 10000.00 |

+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+

The following query is an example on the SQL server, which would fetch the top 3 records from the CUSTOMERS table.

SQL> SELECT TOP 3 * FROM CUSTOMERS;

This would produce the following result −

+----+---------+-----+-----------+---------+

| ID | NAME    | AGE | ADDRESS   | SALARY  |

+----+---------+-----+-----------+---------+

|  1 | Ramesh  |  32 | Ahmedabad | 2000.00 |

|  2 | Khilan  |  25 | Delhi     | 1500.00 |

|  3 | kaushik |  23 | Kota      | 2000.00 |

+----+---------+-----+-----------+---------+

If you are using MySQL server, then here is an equivalent example −

SQL> SELECT * FROM CUSTOMERS

LIMIT 3;

This would produce the following result −

+----+---------+-----+-----------+---------+

| ID | NAME    | AGE | ADDRESS   | SALARY  |

+----+---------+-----+-----------+---------+

|  1 | Ramesh  |  32 | Ahmedabad | 2000.00 |

|  2 | Khilan  |  25 | Delhi     | 1500.00 |

|  3 | kaushik |  23 | Kota      | 2000.00 |

+----+---------+-----+-----------+---------+

If you are using an Oracle server, then the following code block has an equivalent example.

SQL> SELECT * FROM CUSTOMERS

WHERE ROWNUM <= 3;

This would produce the following result −

+----+---------+-----+-----------+---------+

| ID | NAME    | AGE | ADDRESS   | SALARY  |

+----+---------+-----+-----------+---------+

|  1 | Ramesh  |  32 | Ahmedabad | 2000.00 |

|  2 | Khilan  |  25 | Delhi     | 1500.00 |

|  3 | kaushik |  23 | Kota      | 2000.00 |

+----+---------+-----+-----------+---------+