Good to know, thanks. Just for a bit of fun (and because other people might wonder) you might find the following performs even better:

SELECT Result.*

FROM

(

-- Top 10,000 keys over all partitions

SELECT TOP (10000)

AllPartitions.ClaimID,

AllPartitions.RecordDate

FROM

(

-- Top 10,000 keys per partition

SELECT

TopPerPartition.ClaimID,

TopPerPartition.RecordDate

FROM

(

-- Partition ID list

VALUES

(01),(02),(03),(04),(05),(06),(07),(08),(09),(10),

(11),(12),(13),(14),(15),(16),(17),(18),(19),(20),

(21),(22),(23),(24),(25),(26),(27),(28),(29),(30),

(31),(32),(33),(34),(35),(36),(37),(38),(39),(40),

(41),(42),(43),(44),(45),(46),(47),(48),(49),(50),

(51)

) AS PartitionIDs (ID)

CROSS APPLY

(

-- Per-partition query

SELECT TOP (10000)

C.ClaimID,

C.RecordDate

FROM dbo.Claims AS C

WHERE $PARTITION.PF(C.ClaimID) = PartitionIDs.ID

AND PartitionIDs.ID >= $PARTITION.PF(100781325)

AND C.ClaimID > 100781325

ORDER BY C.RecordDate ASC

) AS TopPerPartition

) AS AllPartitions

ORDER BY

AllPartitions.RecordDate ASC

) AS TopKeys

CROSS APPLY

(

-- Add extra columns

SELECT C.*

FROM dbo.Claims AS C

WHERE C.ClaimID = TopKeys.ClaimID

AND C.RecordDate = TopKeys.RecordDate

) AS Result

ORDER BY

Result.RecordDate ASC;