I\'m working on a small project in which I\'ll need to select a record from a temporary table based on the actual row number of the record.
How can I select a record
A couple of the other answers touched on the problem, but this might explain. There really isn't an order implied in SQL (set theory). So to refer to the "fifth row" requires you to introduce the concept
Select *
From
(
Select
Row_Number() Over (Order By SomeField) As RowNum
, *
From TheTable
) t2
Where RowNum = 5
In the subquery, a row number is "created" by defining the order you expect. Now the outer query is able to pull the fifth entry out of that ordered set.