Topic practice collection
LIMIT & OFFSET SQL practice questions
Practice deterministic top-N, cutoff ties, offset pagination, composite keyset cursors, and resumable bounded batches.
- Exercises
- 7
- Difficulty
- Beginner to Advanced
What this collection tests
Skills and query patterns
LIMIT, OFFSET, TOP, FETCH WITH TIES, stable page boundaries, keyset pagination, and high-water marks
Curated exercises
Choose a problem
Work in the live editor where supported. Advanced guided labs state their engine boundary before you open the workspace.
- Problem 1Easy
Return a Deterministic First Batch
Return event_id, event_time, stream, and severity for the first four events by event_id.
- Sorting
- Top-N
SQLite + PostgreSQL + MySQL + SQL Server live · 1 guided
Open problem → - Problem 2Easy
Return a Stable Top Three
Return event_id, stream, and severity for the three highest-severity events.
- Sorting
- Top-N
SQLite + PostgreSQL + MySQL + SQL Server live · 1 guided
Open problem → - Problem 3Medium
Calculate and Return Page Two
Return page two of page_events with page size four, ordered by event_time descending and event_id descending.
- Sorting
- Top-N
SQLite + PostgreSQL + MySQL + SQL Server live · 1 guided
Open problem → - Problem 4Hard
Include Every Row Tied at the Cutoff
Return the first three events by severity with all cutoff ties, then display the selected rows by severity descending and event_id ascending.
- Window functions
- Subqueries
- Filtering
PostgreSQL live
Open problem → - Problem 5Hard
Build a Filtered Pagination Contract
Return page three with page size three for streams 'orders' and 'payments', newest events first.
- Filtering
- Sorting
- Top-N
SQLite + PostgreSQL + MySQL + SQL Server live · 1 guided
Open problem → - Problem 6Hard
Continue with a Composite Keyset Cursor
Return the next four events after cursor (event_time '2025-05-03 09:00:00', event_id 107) in descending keyset order.
- Filtering
- Sorting
- Top-N
SQLite + PostgreSQL + MySQL + SQL Server live · 1 guided
Open problem → - Problem 7Hard
Resume a Bounded Backfill Batch
Return the next three events after event_id 104, without reading beyond high-water event_id 110.
- Filtering
- Sorting
- Top-N
SQLite + PostgreSQL + MySQL + SQL Server live · 1 guided
Open problem →
Attempt
Write a query or design from the brief before opening any hints.
Validate
Run it against the included dataset and inspect the output.
Explain
Compare the verified answer and explain each choice aloud.
Learn before practicing LIMIT & OFFSET
Strengthen your understanding with these targeted learning topics: