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SQL FIRST () Function

FIRST () Function

FIRST () function returns the value of the specified column in the first record.

SQL FIRST () syntax

SELECT FIRST(column_name) FROM table_name;

Note: Only MS Access support FIRST () function.

SQL Server, MySQL and Oracle in SQL FIRST () workspace

SQL Server syntax

SELECT TOP 1 column_name FROM table_name
 ORDER BY column_name ASC;

Examples

SELECT TOP 1 name FROM Websites
ORDER BY id ASC;

MySQL syntax

SELECT column_name FROM table_name
ORDER BY column_name ASC
LIMIT 1;

Examples

SELECT name FROM Websites
ORDER BY id ASC
LIMIT 1;

Oracle Syntax

SELECT column_name FROM table_name
ORDER BY column_name ASC
WHERE ROWNUM <=1;

Examples

SELECT name FROM Websites
ORDER BY id ASC
WHERE ROWNUM <=1;

The demo database

In this tutorial, we will use w3big sample database.

The following is a selected "Websites" table data: 

+----+--------------+---------------------------+-------+---------+
| id | name         | url                       | alexa | country |
+----+--------------+---------------------------+-------+---------+
| 1  | Google       | https://www.google.cm/    | 1     | USA     |
| 2  | 淘宝          | https://www.taobao.com/   | 13    | CN      |
| 3  | 本教程      | http://www.w3big.com/    | 4689  | CN      |
| 4  | 微博          | http://weibo.com/         | 20    | CN      |
| 5  | Facebook     | https://www.facebook.com/ | 3     | USA     |
|  6 | 百度         | https://www.baidu.com/    |     4 | CN      |
|  7 | stackoverflow | http://stackoverflow.com/ |     0 | IND     |
+----+---------------+---------------------------+-------+---------+

SQL FIRST () examples

The following SQL statement select "Websites" table "name" column of the first record values:

Examples

SELECT name AS FirstSite FROM Websites LIMIT 1;

SQL implementation of the above results are as follows: