Order by date desc in oracle 10g

Question

hil all.
i want to order the query by date desc but i want to retrieve only top 20 records according to date means latest how can i get,
Thanks,

Answer 1

Toon Koppelaars wrote:
But of course you can use analytics too, which other posters will show you.Why not ;-)
Depending on what OP want (Note that these does not return the same thing)
SQL> select empno, ename, hiredate, rnk
  from (select emp.*, row_number() over (order by hiredate desc) rnk from emp)
where rnk <= 5
     EMPNO ENAME      HIREDATE        RNK
      7698 BLAKE                        1
      7876 ADAMS      83-01-12          2
      7788 SCOTT      82-12-09          3
      7934 MILLER     82-01-23          4
      7900 JAMES      81-12-03          5
5 rows selected.
SQL> select empno, ename, hiredate, rnk
  from (select emp.*, dense_rank() over (order by hiredate desc) rnk from emp)
where rnk <= 5
     EMPNO ENAME      HIREDATE        RNK
      7698 BLAKE                        1
      7876 ADAMS      83-01-12          2
      7788 SCOTT      82-12-09          3
      7934 MILLER     82-01-23          4
      7900 JAMES      81-12-03          5
      7902 FORD       81-12-03          5
6 rows selected.Regards
Peter