I'm calling the data through linked tables from SQL2008.

The method 'rownum' is not a SQL term.

If you try to use it in a select statement of data on SQL2008 to retrieve data from Oracle you get this error

Msg 207, Level 16, State 1, Line 3

Invalid column name 'rownum'.

Top n will work on one table

If i do this

select top n 3 from table1

I get 3 rows.

It's only when i start to join the tables and then do a top n that Oracle or the intermediare between SQL and Oracle starts to produce errors