How to imit the output of a query?

Hi friends

Can any one help me in a query where i want to limit the output of a query. For example if a query returns 10 records i want to see only first 5 or last five..

Or

In other words i want the functionality similar to LIMIT clause of MySQL in oracle

thanks
Neeraj

Which version of Oracle are you using? In Oracle 9i you can do this by using sub query in FROM clause of SELECT statement, An example is givn below:

SELECT *
FROM (SELECT empno, ename, sal, deptno FROM emp ORDER BY empno DESC)
WHERE rownum<6
/

above query can be used to display the last five records from the table, to display the first five record from the table use following query:

SELECT * FROM emp
WHERE rownum <6
ORDER by empno
/

Just to be sure that we are on the same page:

Shafique's query:

SELECT * FROM emp
WHERE rownum <6
ORDER by empno
/

will return 5 arbitrary rows from the emp table and these 5 rows will be ordered by empno.
Let's be very careful with rownum - It is assigned only when the query is _fetched_.
On second thought, maybe it's not that confusing: after all the where clause is always executed before the order clause.
Right?

Cheers,
Dan