hi

just wanted to add my two bit ... the order by clause will *not* be used in the rownum part of the query

select * from
( select a.*, rownum rnum from
( YOUR_QUERY_GOES_HERE
-- including the order by ) a
where rownum <= 55 )
where rnum >= 35

this will fetch the rows from 35 to 55

Thus the rows are "ordered" before we use the Order By

These topN queries have become even easier with 8i rel2 with the analytic functions

for example

SELECT ename , deptno, sal,
RANK() OVER (PARTITION BY deptno ORDER BY sal DESC)
FROM emp;

Try them out very *cool*

Charanjiv