EN
MS SQL Server - select first N rows
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In this article, we would like to show you how to find and select the first row from a table in MS SQL Server.
Quick solution:
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SELECT TOP N [column1], [column2], [columnN]
2
FROM [table_name];
To show how to select the first N rows from a table, we will use the following table:

Note:
At the end of this article you can find database preparation SQL queries.
In this example, we will select all the information (columns) about the first 3
users from the users
table.
Query:
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SELECT TOP 3 *
2
FROM [users];
Output:

In this example, we will find the first 3 users id
, name
and email
column information.
Query:
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SELECT TOP 3 [id], [name], [email]
2
FROM [users];
Output:

In this example, we will select the first row in some order.
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SELECT TOP 3 *
2
FROM [users]
3
ORDER BY [name];
Output:

create_tables.sql
file:
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CREATE TABLE [users] (
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[id] INT IDENTITY(1,1),
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[name] VARCHAR(100) NOT NULL,
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[email] VARCHAR(100) NOT NULL,
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[country] VARCHAR(15) NOT NULL,
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PRIMARY KEY ([id])
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);
insert_data.sql
file:
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INSERT INTO [users]
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([name], [email], [country])
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VALUES
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('Tom', 'tom@email.com', 'Poland'),
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('Chris', 'chris@email.com', 'Spain'),
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('Jack', 'jack@email.com', 'Spain'),
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('Kim', 'kim@email.com', 'Vietnam'),
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('Marco', 'marco@email.com', 'Italy'),
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('Kate', 'kate@email.com', 'Spain'),
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('Nam', 'nam@email.com', 'Vietnam');