Getting the Top-N Records From an Ordered Set &
The New Row Limiting Clause – 11g & 12c
and a cup of tea if you’re lucky
I bet my cup of raspberry-juiced black tea that, somewhere along your journey with Oracle, you had to write a query which was supposed to return only the top-n rows from an ordered set. Unlike some of the other databases, MySQL, for instance, Oracle does not provide a dedicated solution to this problem.
At least, not before the 12c hit the stage.
Before I introduce you to the nice Row Limiting Clause, let me show you why the first solution that comes to mind to solve the problem at hand, in Oracle’s versions prior to 12c, is not the right one, and what voodoo tricks one has to perform to achieve the expected result. Czytaj dalej