How to select only 1 row from oracle sql?

Question

You use ROWNUM.

ie.

SELECT user FROM Dual WHERE ROWNUM = 1

http://docs.oracle.com/cd/B19306_01/server.102/b14200/pseudocolumns009.htm

I found this "solution" hidden in one of the comments. Since I was looking it up for a while, I'd like to highlight it a bit (can't yet comment or do such stuff...), so this is what I used:

SELECT * FROM (SELECT [Column] FROM [Table] ORDER BY [Date] DESC) WHERE ROWNUM = 1

This will print me the desired [Column] entry from the newest entry in the table, assuming that [Date] is always inserted via SYSDATE.

This syntax is available in Oracle 12c:

select * from some_table fetch first 1 row only;
select * from some_table fetch first 1 rows only;
select * from some_table fetch first 10 row only;
select * from some_table fetch first 10 rows only;

^^I just wanted to demonstrate that either row or rows (plural) can be used regardless of the plurality of the desired number of rows.)

we have 3 choices to get the first row in Oracle DB table.

1) select * from table_name where rownum= 1 is the best way

2) select * from table_name where id = ( select min(id) from table_name)

3)

select * from 
    (select * from table_name order by id)
where rownum = 1

👌 The answer is:

You should use nested query as:

SELECT *
FROM ANY_TABLE_X 
WHERE ANY_COLUMN_X = (SELECT MAX(ANY_COLUMN_X) FROM ANY_TABLE_X) 

=> In PL/SQL "ROWNUM = 1" is NOT equal to "TOP 1" of TSQL.

So you can't use a query like this: "select * from any_table_x where rownum=1 order by any_column_x;" Because oracle gets first row then applies order by clause.