T-SQL Querying: TOP and OFFSET-FETCH

Conclusion

This chapter covered the TOP and OFFSET-FETCH filters. It started with a logical description of the filters. It then continued with optimization aspects demonstrated through paging solutions. You saw how critical it is to have an index on the sort columns to get good performance. Even with an index, I gave recommendations how to alter the solutions to avoid unnecessary lookups.

The chapter also covered modifying data with the TOP filter. Finally, the chapter concluded by demonstrating the use of TOP and OFFSET-FETCH to solve common tasks like top N per group and using a median value.