How do you combine ORDER BY and LIMIT?
ORDER BY and LIMIT are often used together to get only the needed number of rows after sorting.
Syntax
sql
SELECT *
FROM table_name
ORDER BY column_name [ASC|DESC]
LIMIT count;Example 1: top 5 by salary
sql
SELECT name, salary
FROM employees
ORDER BY salary DESC
LIMIT 5;SQL first sorts all employees by salary, from largest to smallest, then returns only the first 5 rows (the top 5 highest salaries).
Example 2: earliest dates
sql
SELECT event_name, date
FROM events
ORDER BY date ASC
LIMIT 10;Returns the 10 earliest events.
Example 3: together with OFFSET
To skip the first rows and take the next ones:
sql
SELECT name, salary
FROM employees
ORDER BY salary DESC
LIMIT 5 OFFSET 5;Skips the first 5 and returns the next 5, useful for pagination.
Summary:
ORDER BYsets the order,LIMITrestricts the row count,- together they let you get, for example, the top N records or the first results from a sorted list.
Short Answer
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