Queries to find the top-N rows or page through results are common. For example, to find the three winners of a tournament, top five selling products or page 5 of the most recent comments.

But how do you write the SQL to answer these questions and which indexes ensure the statements are fast?

Watch the recording to learn the basics of order by, how to use fetch first to get the top-N rows and paged search results, and indexing strategies to make these queries fast.

Highlights include:

• 00:10 - Slow pagination query
• 01:50 - Order by basics
• 14:00 - Demo of order by
• 17:30 - Demo controlling location of nulls
• 26:00 - Top-N queries using fetch first
• 30:00 - Real world demo of fetch first N bricks
• 32:40 - Creating indexes for Top-N queries
• 35:20 - Demo of Top-N queries
• 40:50 - Demo of using indexes to avoid sorting
• 46:30 - How descending sorts affects index usage
• 56:00 - Pagination queries
• 56:30 - Inconsistent results for pagination queries
• 59:40 - Performance of pagination queries
• 1:02:55 - Demo of pagination queries
• 1:09:50 - Summary of pagination & top-N SQL