Selecting Nth Record in an SQL Query

Question

I have an SQL Query that i'm running but I only want to select a specific row. For example lets say my query was:

Select * from Comments

Lets say this returns 10 rows, I only want to select the 8th record returned by this query. I know I can do:

Select Top 5 * from Comments

To get the top 5 records of that query but I only want to select a certain record, is there anything I can put into this query to do that (similar to top).

Thanks

jack

Answer 1

This is a classic interview question.

In Ms SQL 2005+ you can use the ROW_NUMBER() keyword and have the Predicate ROW_NUMBER = n

USE AdventureWorks;
GO
WITH OrderedOrders AS
(
    SELECT SalesOrderID, OrderDate,
    ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY OrderDate) AS 'RowNumber'
    FROM Sales.SalesOrderHeader 
)  

SELECT * 
FROM OrderedOrders 
WHERE RowNumber = 5;

In SQL2000 you could do something like

SELECT Top 1 *FROM
[tblApplications]
where [ApplicationID] In
(
    SELECT TOP 5 [ApplicationID]
    FROM [dbo].[tblApplications]
    order by applicationId Desc
)