How can I get just the first row in a result set AFTER ordering?

Question

This gives me just one row (the first one):

SELECT BLA FROM BLA WHERE BLA AND ROWNUM < 2 

However, I want the most recent date val; I can make that the first row this way:

SELECT BLA FROM BLA WHERE BLA ORDER BY FINALDATE DESC 

When I try to mix the two partial victories, though, it doesn't work - apparently the "Select the first row only" logic fires before the order by, and then the order by is subsequently ignored.

Answer 1

In 12c, here's the new way:

select bla   from bla  where bla  order by finaldate desc  fetch first 1 rows only;  

How nice is that!

Answer 2

This question is similar to How do I limit the number of rows returned by an Oracle query after ordering?.

It talks about how to implement a MySQL limit on an oracle database which judging by your tags and post is what you are using.

The relevant section is:

select * from     ( select *    from emp    order by sal desc )    where ROWNUM <= 5;