What is the LIMIT or TOP clause and when is it used?

< 1 min read

The LIMIT or TOP clause is used to restrict the number of rows returned by a query.
TOP is used in SQL Server, while LIMIT is common in MySQL and PostgreSQL.
It helps preview data without scanning the full table.
In my project, we used TOP 100 to quickly validate extracted data.
It is also useful for performance testing and sampling.
LIMIT is often combined with ORDER BY to get recent or top records.
This makes data exploration faster and more efficient.

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