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rajanbharathi

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How to select a column with order by for the same column

How to select a column with order by for the same column,

For eg :- If a table Employee having 4 columns Empno, Empname, Sal, DOJ and i want to get the top 50 employees based on the latest DOJ and first column as DOJ in my results.

if i use the below query  

select top 50 DOJ ,* from Employee with (NOLOCK) order by DOJ desc

It throws Ambiguous column name.
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jmoss111
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Hello rajanbharathi,

select top 50 DOJ, Empno, Empname, Sal from Employee with (NOLOCK) order by DOJ desc


Regards,

Jim
rajanbharathi,

The problem is that you selected top 50 doj and then * which included doj


jmoss111
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rajanbharathi

ASKER

Hi Jim,

This is ok ,, if the table having more than 50 columns i cant apply this .. Please suggest for such case..

Thanks in Advance..

Bharathi
Yes the problem is that , but i can use the same in SQL Server 2000.
I dont think that you understand; the query return the top 50 rows of doj and the other columns in the table.
use apstaging
select top 50 invoice_amount, invoice_number from aging order by invoice_amount desc
returns:
 
9999	5820009380
9998.3	63622
9998.1	A86018
9998.05	A86018
9997.29	2975
9997.27	2975
9997	91010406
9993.6	9401770153
99900	2008057838
9990	40817
9990	5363N
9990	5399N
999.98	0027234
999.9	080938636
999.9	100281
999.73	393/105492
999.68	009516
999.68	009517
999.6	38603
999.6	2160166
999.58	589766
999.39	147201
999.36	000065079
999.36	000064975
999.18	205218
999.12	21424
999.12	21424
999.05	5632S
999.02	5681S
999.02	5683S
999	5368N
999	190414
999	190415
999	5378N
999	5387N
999	5390N
999	5397N
999	5375N
999	5372N
999	E03771
999	5683S
999	5327N
999	5791S
999	08080137
999	5632S
999	5835S
999	5795S
999	5796S
999	5748S
999	5814S

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use apstaging
select top 50 invoice_amount, * from aging order by invoice_amount desc


Msg 209, Level 16, State 1, Line 2
Ambiguous column name 'invoice_amount'.
Yes this is what i am also facing.. comments please
I'm not facing the same problem; that was an example that I made for you.

I have given you the solution to your problem.

Your problem is that you selected top 50 of a column then used * which would return all columns but you already had doj in the top 50 so you got the ambiguous column name error.

Jim
Yes you  are right , But i want to display many columns not two or three in the select list.
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jmoss111
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Did that work out for you?

Jim
Did it not work very well, B?