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FETCH FIRST n ROWS ONLY functionality in Oracle
How can I limit the resulting rows of an ordered SELECT statement without using a nested select with order clause in the inner select? In DB2 SQL, I currently use the FETCH FIRST n ROWS ONLY.
Oracle does not have the same functionality that you describe in DB2. Oracle's solution to the problem is to use the nested SELECT with an ORDER BY clause to limit rows. Oracle 9i may be able to help your problem by introducing new analytical functions like RANK and DENSE_RANK. But you'd need to have some paritioning column to make those functions work for you.
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