Snowflake supports bothTOPandLIMITas valid SQL mechanisms for restricting the number of rows returned by a query. They function similarly but are used in different syntactic positions.
LIMITappears at the end of the query:
SELECT * FROM my_table LIMIT 10;
This tells Snowflake to return only the specified number of rows.
TOPis used in the SELECT clause:
SELECT TOP 10 * FROM my_table;
Both approaches are equivalent in functionality and are supported to maintain compatibility with ANSI SQL and other SQL dialects.
The other options are not correct row-limiting mechanisms:
*SELECTis a required keyword but does not limit rows on its own.
*GETis not a SQL keyword for row restriction; GET is used for downloading files from internal stages.
*ROW_NUMBERis a window function used for ranking rows, not constraining row count.
Therefore, TOP and LIMIT are the only correct SQL keywords in Snowflake for controlling how many rows are returned by a query.