last record

[leonard905]

Hi

How can one select the last record on a table. Can this be done with just a simple sql statement?


Thanks in advance,

[Shestakov]

What do u mean when wrote "LAST RECORD" ?
Last in time?
Last in table? (last row in last db block)
Last in same order of rows?

[leonard905]

select * from master_control where rowid = (select max(rowid) from master_control).

[Shestakov]

Originally posted by leonard905
select * from master_control where rowid = (select max(rowid) from master_control).

What about row, that insert into middle of extent, if some block was in freelist ?
Oracle not always insert rows in block that equal or upper then HWM.
--------------------------------------------------
In addition: Oracle not always allocate next extent for table behind previous one.

[Edited by Shestakov on 03-28-2002 at 02:27 PM]

[Mnemonical]

what about

select * from table where rownum = ( select count(*) from table)



F.

[ales]

Originally posted by Mnemonical
select * from table where rownum = ( select count(*) from table)

Never returns anything.
Only meaningful conditions for rownum are
rownum<
rownum<=
rownum=1

The base question is still unanswered: What does LAST RECORD mean?

[Raminder]

You will never be able to find out the 'last record' inserted unless you have a column in the table with time-stamp for each row inserted. ROWIDs are reused and ROWNUMs simply give a serial number to all records returned by the query.

'Relational' databases do not store records in a particular order (neither do they return them in the order they were inserted.)

For complete and indepth discussion on this question, see

http://www.oracle.com/oramag/oracle/...o61asktom.html