Just some of the rows
LIMIT n returns at most n rows; ORDER BY decides which n.
Hone is a place to practise programming. This is one of its lessons, written out in full and free to read without an account.
What it is for
Pagination, previews, top-N, sampling a query before running it on everything.
How to think about it
Which rows come first, and says who? Never LIMIT without ORDER BY when it matters which rows: without an order, 'first' is arbitrary.
Worked example
SELECT title FROM films ORDER BY year DESC LIMIT 5;The five newest.
SELECT title FROM films ORDER BY year LIMIT 10 OFFSET 20;Page 3 of 10 per page.
Your turn
Three cheapest products.
SELECT name FROM products ORDER BY price 3;
Run a query against real tables
The trap
OFFSET on big tables gets slower with each page; keyset pagination (WHERE id > last_seen) does not.
Practise LIMIT on HoneA question on it now, a coding challenge where there is one, and it is remembered for review. Free, no email needed.