Technical differences between Spring Data JPA's findFirst and findTop

Question

I recently started working with Spring data jpa.

It would be highly appreciable if somebody could throw some light on the technical differences

Answer 1

From Spring Data JPA - Reference Documentation,

Limiting query results

The results of query methods can be limited via the keywords first or top, which can be used interchangeably. An optional numeric value can be appended to top/first to specify the maximum result size to be returned. If the number is left out, a result size of 1 is assumed.

Limiting the result size of a query with Top and First

User findFirstByOrderByLastnameAsc();

User findTopByOrderByAgeDesc();

Page queryFirst10ByLastname(String lastname, Pageable pageable);

Slice findTop3ByLastname(String lastname, Pageable pageable);

List findFirst10ByLastname(String lastname, Sort sort);

List findTop10ByLastname(String lastname, Pageable pageable);

The limiting expressions also support the Distinct keyword. Also, for the queries limiting the result set to one instance, wrapping the result into an Optional is supported.