Limiting Inserted Rows by Using TOP

You can use the TOP keyword to limit the number of rows that are inserted.

The following example creates the NewEmployee table and inserts address data for the top 10 employees from the Employee table into it. The SELECT statement is then executed to verify the contents of the NewEmployee table.

USE AdventureWorks;
GO
IF OBJECT_ID (N'HumanResources.NewEmployee', N'U') IS NOT NULL
    DROP TABLE HumanResources.NewEmployee;
GO
CREATE TABLE HumanResources.NewEmployee
(
    EmployeeID int NOT NULL,
    LastName nvarchar(50) NOT NULL,
    FirstName nvarchar(50) NOT NULL,
    Phone Phone NULL,
    AddressLine1 nvarchar(60) NOT NULL,
    City nvarchar(30) NOT NULL,
    State nchar(3) NOT NULL, 
    PostalCode nvarchar(15) NOT NULL,
    CurrentFlag Flag
);
GO
INSERT TOP (10) INTO HumanResources.NewEmployee 
    SELECT
       e.EmployeeID, c.LastName, c.FirstName, c.Phone,
       a.AddressLine1, a.City, sp.StateProvinceCode, 
       a.PostalCode, e.CurrentFlag
    FROM HumanResources.Employee e
        INNER JOIN HumanResources.EmployeeAddress AS ea
        ON e.EmployeeID = ea.EmployeeID
        INNER JOIN Person.Address AS a
        ON ea.AddressID = a.AddressID
        INNER JOIN Person.StateProvince AS sp
        ON a.StateProvinceID = sp.StateProvinceID
        INNER JOIN Person.Contact as c
        ON e.ContactID = c.ContactID;
GO
SELECT  EmployeeID, LastName, FirstName, Phone,
        AddressLine1, City, State, PostalCode, CurrentFlag
FROM HumanResources.NewEmployee;
GO

See Also

Concepts

Limiting Result Sets by Using TOP and PERCENT
Inserting a Row by Using INSERT and Values
Inserting Rows by Using INSERT and SELECT Subqueries
Inserting Rows by Using SELECT INTO
Adding Rows by Using INSERT and SELECT

Other Resources

INSERT (Transact-SQL)
TOP (Transact-SQL)
SELECT (Transact-SQL)

Help and Information

Getting SQL Server 2005 Assistance