Last n query

Question

Do anyone know how to write a sql query to get the last 5 record.
e.g. there are 10 records and record number are 11, 3, 6, 32, 55, 7, 21, 90
i want to get the record record number in
90, 55, 32, 21, 11
But i dont want to write 5 nested.....
Can anyone help me?

Answer 1

The solutions that Todd and David provided should work and I am surprised that they don't. If you are going to use Todd's solution, it does require that you use the order by clause in the sub-query, as David explained. Usually, it is only Oracle versions prior to 8i that do not allow the order by clause in the sub-query. However, as APC said, sometimes what Forms allows lags a bit behind what Oracle allows. So, if you can't use an order by clause in a sub-query or the ROW_NUMBER() function, then here is one of those slow, old, poorly performing queries that Todd mentioned. Try it and see it solves your problem:
DECLARE
CURSOR c1
IS
SELECT sal
FROM emp outer
WHERE 5 >=
(SELECT COUNT (sal) + 1
FROM emp inner
WHERE inner.sal > outer.sal)
ORDER BY sal DESC;
BEGIN
NULL;
END;
For a detailed explanation of the use of ROWNUM in sub-queries for top-n analysis and alternatives for older versions, including examples and references, click on the link below:
http://technet.oracle.com:89/ubb/Forum88/HTML/002476.html
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