SELECT TOP N and BOTTOM N Rows Using SQL Server

If you have been looking out for a query that gives you TOP 'N' and Bottom 'N' records of a table, then check this out.

The query shown below selects the TOP 5 and BOTTOM 5 records ordered by CustomerID from the 'Customers' table of the Northwind database:

;With CTETemp

as

(

Select

CustomerID

,ROW_NUMBER() OVER (Order BY CustomerID) as TopFive

,ROW_NUMBER() OVER (Order BY CustomerID Desc) as BottomFive

FROM

Customers

)

Select CustomerID From CTETemp Where TopFive <=5 or BottomFive <=5

ORDER BY TopFive asc

Result:

Customer ID

ALFKI

ANATR

ANTON

AROUT

BERGS

WARTH

WELLI

WHITC

WILMK

WOLZA

About The Author

Suprotim Agarwal, MCSD, MCAD, MCDBA, MCSE, is the founder of DotNetCurry, DNC Magazine for Developers, SQLServerCurry and DevCurry. He has also authored a couple of books 51 Recipes using jQuery with ASP.NET Controls and a new one recently at The Absolutely Awesome jQuery CookBook.

Suprotim has received the prestigous Microsoft MVP award for nine times in a row now. In a professional capacity, he is the CEO of A2Z Knowledge Visuals Pvt Ltd, a digital group that represents premium web sites and digital publications comprising of Professional web, windows, mobile and cloud developers, technical managers, and architects.

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