Question

If I select a column in a table, say 10 rows, can I use SQL to insert a ‘please select’ row into the first position using SQL only? I want to insert it in the result set only – not the database.

Answer 1

First you should know this is a bad idea.

You are confusing your presentation layer and your database layer. Forcing SQL to do things like output status messages or feedback to users is an antipattern to be avoided.

That being said, if the column is of a string type (char, varchar, etc), you can do something like:

SELECT 'Please Select'
UNION ALL
SELECT TOP 10 Varcharfield
FROM Mytable

If it’s numeric then no unless you cast it to a string type.