Question

consider this CTE

;WITH Columns AS 
(
    SELECT object_id AS TableId, Name AS ColumnName 
    FROM SYS.columns
), 
Tables AS 
(
    SELECT S.NAME AS SchemaName, T.NAME AS TableName, object_id AS TableId
    FROM sys.tables T
    INNER JOIN  sys.schemas S ON S.schema_id = T.schema_id
)
SELECT T.SchemaName, T.TableName, C.ColumnName
FROM Tables T
INNER JOIN Columns C ON T.TableId = C.TableId

What I want to do is to limit the results of the columns to only be the first three (say ordered alphabetically for example)

So if I have 1 schema (e.g. dbo) with 2 tables TableX & TableY with 4 cols each ColA, ColB, ColC, ColD my results would be
something like

  dbo   TableX    ColA
  dbo   TableX    ColB
  dbo   TableX    ColC
  dbo   TableY    ColA
  dbo   TableY    ColB
  dbo   TableY    ColC

schema_a

Answer 1

Looks like I found answer 🙂

Select Top row of 2nd table in SQL Join

;WITH Columns AS 
(
    SELECT 
        row_number() over (partition by object_id ORDER BY Name DESC) as RowNumber,
        object_id AS TableId, 
        Name AS ColumnName 
    FROM SYS.columns
), 
Tables AS 
(
    SELECT 
        S.NAME AS SchemaName, 
        T.NAME AS TableName, object_id AS TableId
    FROM sys.tables T
    INNER JOIN  sys.schemas S ON S.schema_id = T.schema_id
)
SELECT T.SchemaName, T.TableName, C.RowNumber, C.ColumnName
FROM Tables T
INNER JOIN Columns C ON T.TableId = C.TableId
where RowNumber BETWEEN 1 AND 3