Impala - Limit Clause

The limit clause in Impala is used to restrict the number of rows of a resultset to a desired number, i.e., the resultset of the query does not hold the records beyond the specified limit.

Syntax

Following is the syntax of the Limit clause in Impala.

select * from table_name order by id limit numerical_expression;

Example

Assume we have a table named customers in the database my_db and its contents are as follows −

[quickstart.cloudera:21000] > select * from customers; 
Query: select * from customers 
+----+----------+-----+-----------+--------+ 
| id | name     | age | address   | salary | 
+----+----------+-----+-----------+--------+ 
| 3  | kaushik  | 23  | Kota      | 30000  | 
| 6  | Komal    | 22  | MP        | 32000  | 
| 1  | Ramesh   | 32  | Ahmedabad | 20000  | 
| 5  | Hardik   | 27  | Bhopal    | 40000  | 
| 2  | Khilan   | 25  | Delhi     | 15000  | 
| 8  | ram      | 22  | vizag     | 31000  | 
| 9  | robert   | 23  | banglore  | 28000  | 
| 7  | ram      | 25  | chennai   | 23000  | 
| 4  | Chaitali | 25  | Mumbai    | 35000  | 
+----+----------+-----+-----------+--------+ 
Fetched 9 row(s) in 0.51s

You can arrange the records in the table in the ascending order of their id’s using the order by clause as shown below.

[quickstart.cloudera:21000] > select * from customers order by id; 
Query: select * from customers order by id 
+----+----------+-----+-----------+--------+ 
| id | name     | age | address   | salary | 
+----+----------+-----+-----------+--------+ 
| 1  | Ramesh   | 32  | Ahmedabad | 20000  | 
| 2  | Khilan   | 25  | Delhi     | 15000  | 
| 3  | kaushik  | 23  | Kota      | 30000  | 
| 4  | Chaitali | 25  | Mumbai    | 35000  | 
| 5  | Hardik   | 27  | Bhopal    | 40000  | 
| 6  | Komal    | 22  | MP        | 32000  | 
| 7  | ram      | 25  | chennai   | 23000  | 
| 8  | ram      | 22  | vizag     | 31000  |
| 9  | robert   | 23  | banglore  | 28000  | 
+----+----------+-----+-----------+--------+ 
Fetched 9 row(s) in 0.54s

Now, using the limit clause, you can restrict the number of records of the output to 4, using the limit clause as shown below.

[quickstart.cloudera:21000] > select * from customers order by id limit 4;

On executing, the above query gives the following output.

Query: select * from customers order by id limit 4 
+----+----------+-----+-----------+--------+ 
| id | name     | age | address   | salary | 
+----+----------+-----+-----------+--------+ 
| 1  | Ramesh   | 32  | Ahmedabad | 20000  | 
| 2  | Khilan   | 25  | Delhi     | 15000  |
| 3  | kaushik  | 23  | Kota      | 30000  | 
| 4  | Chaitali | 25  | Mumbai    | 35000  | 
+----+----------+-----+-----------+--------+ 
Fetched 4 row(s) in 0.64s