How to Use Limit Keyword in SQL Server 2005

How to implement LIMIT with SQL Server?

Starting SQL SERVER 2005, you can do this...

USE AdventureWorks;
GO
WITH OrderedOrders AS
(
    SELECT SalesOrderID, OrderDate,
    ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY OrderDate) AS 'RowNumber'
    FROM Sales.SalesOrderHeader 
) 
SELECT * 
FROM OrderedOrders 
WHERE RowNumber BETWEEN 10 AND 20;

or something like this for 2000 and below versions...

SELECT TOP 10 * FROM (SELECT TOP 20 FROM Table ORDER BY Id) ORDER BY Id DESC

Equivalent of LIMIT and OFFSET for SQL Server?

The equivalent of LIMIT is SET ROWCOUNT, but if you want generic pagination it's better to write a query like this:

;WITH Results_CTE AS
(
    SELECT
        Col1, Col2, ...,
        ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY SortCol1, SortCol2, ...) AS RowNum
    FROM Table
    WHERE <whatever>
)
SELECT *
FROM Results_CTE
WHERE RowNum >= @Offset
AND RowNum < @Offset + @Limit

The advantage here is the parameterization of the offset and limit in case you decide to change your paging options (or allow the user to do so).

Note: the @Offset parameter should use one-based indexing for this rather than the normal zero-based indexing.

LIMIT 10..20 in SQL Server

The LIMIT clause is not part of standard SQL. It's supported as a vendor extension to SQL by MySQL, PostgreSQL, and SQLite.

Other brands of database may have similar features (e.g. TOP in Microsoft SQL Server), but these don't always work identically.

It's hard to use TOP in Microsoft SQL Server to mimic the LIMIT clause. There are cases where it just doesn't work.

The solution you showed, using ROW_NUMBER() is available in Microsoft SQL Server 2005 and later. This is the best solution (for now) that works solely as part of the query.

Another solution is to use TOP to fetch the first count + offset rows, and then use the API to seek past the first offset rows.

See also:

• "Emulate MySQL LIMIT clause in Microsoft SQL Server 2000"
• "Paging of Large Resultsets in ASP.NET"

How to limit the answers of the GROUP BY clause in sql-server (2005)

;WITH cte
     As (SELECT clientid,
                city,
                COUNT(city) as cnt,
                ROW_NUMBER() OVER (PARTITION BY clientid 
                                       ORDER BY COUNT(city)) AS RN
         FROM   customers
         GROUP  BY clientid,
                   city)
SELECT clientid,
       city
FROM   cte
WHERE  RN <= 50  

Is LIMIT not allow in sql server 2008?

you are probably looking for top

SELECT TOP 20 employeedept, execoffice_status, employee,
COUNT(*) AS 'employeetotal',YEAR_cse1 =YEAR(execoffice_date)
FROM CSEReduxResponses
WHERE execoffice_status = 1
GROUP BY employeedept, execoffice_status, YEAR(execoffice_date), employee 
order by [YEAR_cse1]

IN clause limitation in Sql Server

Yes, there is a limit, but Microsoft only specifies that it lies "in the thousands":

Explicitly including an extremely large number of values (many thousands of values separated by commas) within the parentheses, in an IN clause can consume resources and return errors 8623 or 8632. To work around this problem, store the items in the IN list in a table, and use a SELECT subquery within an IN clause.

Looking at those errors in details, we see that this limit is not specific to IN but applies to query complexity in general:

Error 8623:

The query processor ran out of internal resources and could not produce a query plan. This is a rare event and only expected for extremely complex queries or queries that reference a very large number of tables or partitions. Please simplify the query. If you believe you have received this message in error, contact Customer Support Services for more information.

Error 8632:

Internal error: An expression services limit has been reached. Please look for potentially complex expressions in your query, and try to simplify them.

MySQL LIMIT clause equivalent for SQL SERVER

In SQL Server 2012, there is support for the ANSI standard OFFSET / FETCH syntax. I blogged about this and here is the official doc (this is an extension to ORDER BY). Your syntax converted for SQL Server 2012 would be:

SELECT ID, Name, Price, Image 
  FROM Products 
  ORDER BY ID ASC 
  OFFSET (@start_from - 1) ROWS -- not sure if you need -1
    -- because I don't know how you calculated @start_from
  FETCH NEXT @items_on_page ROWS ONLY;

Prior to that, you need to use various workarounds, including the ROW_NUMBER() method. See this article and the follow-on discussion. If you are not on SQL Server 2012, you can't use standard syntax or MySQL's non-standard LIMIT but you can use a more verbose solution such as:

;WITH o AS
(
    SELECT TOP ((@start_from - 1) + @items_on_page)
         -- again, not sure if you need -1 because I 
         -- don't know how you calculated @start_from
      RowNum = ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY ID ASC)
      /* , other columns */
    FROM Products
)
SELECT 
    RowNum
    /* , other columns */
FROM
    o
WHERE
    RowNum >= @start_from
ORDER BY
    RowNum;

There are many other ways to skin this cat, this is unlikely to be the most efficient but syntax-wise is probably simplest. I suggest reviewing the links I posted as well as the duplicate suggestions noted in the comments to the question.

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