SQL Server SELECT LAST N Rows

Question

This is a known question but the best solution I\'ve found is something like:

SELECT TOP N *
FROM MyTable
ORDER BY Id DESC

I\'ve a table wi

Answer 1

First you most get record count from

 Declare @TableRowsCount Int
 select @TableRowsCount= COUNT(*) from <Your_Table>

And then :

In SQL Server 2012

SELECT *
FROM  <Your_Table> As L
ORDER BY L.<your Field>
OFFSET <@TableRowsCount-@N> ROWS
FETCH NEXT @N ROWS ONLY;

In SQL Server 2008

SELECT *
FROM 
(
SELECT ROW_NUMBER() OVER(ORDER BY ID) AS sequencenumber, *
FROM  <Your_Table>
    Order By <your Field>
) AS TempTable
WHERE sequencenumber > @TableRowsCount-@N 

Answer 2

You can make SQL server to select last N rows using this SQL:

select * from tbl_name order by id desc limit N;

Answer 3

This query returns last N rows in correct order, but it's performance is poor

select *
from (
    select top N *
    from TableName t
    order by t.[Id] desc
) as temp
order by temp.[Id]

Answer 4

Is "Id" indexed? If not, that's an important thing to do (I suspect it is already indexed).

Also, do you need to return ALL columns? You may be able to get a substantial improvement in speed if you only actually need a smaller subset of columns which can be FULLY catered for by the index on the ID column - e.g. if you have a NONCLUSTERED index on the Id column, with no other fields included in the index, then it would have to do a lookup on the clustered index to actually get the rest of the columns to return and that could be making up a lot of the cost of the query. If it's a CLUSTERED index, or a NONCLUSTERED index that includes all the other fields you want to return in the query, then you should be fine.

Answer 5

Here's something you can try without an order by but I think it requires that each row is unique. N is the number of rows you want, L is the number of rows in the table.

select * from tbl_name except select top L-N * from tbl_name

As noted before, which rows are returned is undefined.

EDIT: this is actually dog slow. Of no value really.

Answer 6

Try using the EXCEPT syntax.
Something like this:

   SELECT * 
    FROM   clientDetails 
    EXCEPT 
    (SELECT TOP (numbers of rows - how many rows you want) * 
     FROM   clientDetails)