Which database invented the "limit" SQL query syntax?

Question

MySQL has a nice feature (although non standard) which allow to query resultsets' limit, offset as

SELECT * FROM TABLE LIMIT M, N;

Is it created by MySQL? or Postgres?

Answer 1

According to Wikipedia, Rasmus Lerdorf (the original creator of PHP) first used the "LIMIT x" syntax in the mSQL database:

He has contributed to the Apache HTTP Server and he also came up with the LIMIT clause and added it to the mSQL Database in 1995. It is the origin of the LIMIT clauses found in MySQL and PostgreSQL.

Limiting the result set is now also standardized, but with a more verbose syntax:

SELECT *
FROM T
FETCH FIRST 10 ROWS ONLY

Answer 2

Postgres added the LIMIT syntax in v6.5, released on June 9th, 1999.

Based on the documentation, MySQL had LIMIT syntax starting at v3.23 (production release Jan, 2001). But the docs in the URL are for 4.1, which wasn't released until 2004.

SQL Server didn't have TOP until SQL Server 2000, shipping in late 2000.

Oracle has had ROWNUM since Oracle 6, released in 1988. Scarier still, is that it can perform better in cases than ROW_NUMBER!