LIMIT keyword

Specify the number and position of records returned by a SELECT statement.

In other implementations of SQL, this is sometimes replaced by statements such as OFFSET or ROWNUM Our implementation of LIMIT encompasses both in one statement.

Syntax

• numberOfRecords is the number of records to return.
• upperBound and lowerBound is the return range. lowerBound is exclusive and upperBound is inclusive.

A positive number will return the first n records. A negative number will return the last n records.

Examples

First 5 results

SELECT * FROM ratings LIMIT 5;

Last 5 results

SELECT * FROM ratings LIMIT -5;

Range results - this will return records 3, 4 and 5

SELECT * FROM ratings LIMIT 2,5;

negative range parameters will return results from the bottom of the table. Assuming a table with n records, the following will return records between n-7 (exclusive) and n-3 (inclusive), i.e {n-6, n-5, n-4, n-3}. Both upperBound and lowerBound must be negative numbers, in this case:

Range results (negative)

SELECT * FROM ratings LIMIT -7, -3;