Question

What’s wrong with the following statement? I’m using SQL Server 2008.

use Demo;

SELECT * FROM users
limit 0 , 30

I got:

Msg 102, Level 15, State 1, Line 4
Incorrect syntax near '0'.

That’s really weird. I tried Google but didn’t find much info.

Answer 1

LIMIT is a MySQL keyword. Use the TOP or ROWCOUNT keywords in MS SQL Server.

Note that TOP can accept a variable, e.g. SELECT TOP( @NumberOfRows ) * FROM Foo;

See: How to use LIMIT keyword in SQL Server 2005? (also valid for 2008)

Depending on how LIMIT is used, there is an important difference between LIMIT and TOP (ranges/pages of data versus just capping the number of results). In that case, the MS SQL syntax is more verbose; usually the ROW_NUMBER() function does the trick combined with some simple logic to calculate the values which are valid for the desired page.

Simple Range Selection Example

SELECT * FROM
(
    SELECT 
        ROW_NUMBER() OVER( ORDER BY SomeColumn ASC ) AS RowNumber, 
        AnotherColumn 
    FROM dbo.MyTable
) Q

WHERE RowNumber BETWEEN 20 AND 30; -- these integers can be variables