Recent Transaction Records

[Mahendran Duraisamy]

Hi,
Is there a way to pull the recent 20 records from Oracle Database table without using any field in particular.
My table contains fields like ,
session_id - looks like random number generator
timestamp with only date not the time.
The table is logged by some application in the background whenever a transaction is occurred.
For example , in any web server if u view the log file thru the administrative screen/console u have this option like display the recent 20 records or display the last first. That kind of thing.
but i don't know how to write SQL query to display the recently inserted 20 records at any point of time.

Thanks and Regards,
mahendran

[rani bedi]

Well I don't think there is a direct method to retreive the last 20 records. You will either have to add a timestamp field in your table or if thats not possible add another table in your database which will keep track of the records inserted in the reqd. table.

[Mahendran Duraisamy]

Hi Parmeet,
Thanks for ur reply.
I was talking to one of our developer who is logging that table which has date field. He told me to write a query to display both the date and time from "date" field.
It appears like this "MM-DD-YYYY:HH:MM:SS" will u pls. tell me how to sort this particular column to get the recent 20 records at any point of time.
Thanks,
mahendran

[Daniel Dunleavy]

you can order DESCENDING

[rani bedi]

You can write a query using ORDERBY clause on the date column. Then from the resultset you can retrieve 20 records using a for loop.

[Mahendran Duraisamy]

Thank U very much parmeet.
It works.
Regards,
mahendran