if there is no rownum feature, what is the best way to retrieve the first 5 or 10 records out of a table?

As there are no such things as records in SQL (See many of Jeff Mason's posts for explanations ;)) the question is meaningless.
What you are able to do is select the top x rows or columns from a query, but unless you explicitly state an ordering scheme eg
[code]
SELECT Top 10 * FROM aTable ORDER BY ColumnA
[\code]
, you will not be able to rely on having the same records on consecutive runs of the query.

HTH


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