• Books Online 2008


    Using SET ROWCOUNT will not affect DELETE, INSERT, and UPDATE statements in the next release of SQL Server. Avoid using SET ROWCOUNT with DELETE, INSERT, and UPDATE statements in new development work, and plan to modify applications that currently use it. We recommend that DELETE, INSERT, and UPDATE statements that currently are using SET ROWCOUNT be rewritten to use TOP.

    It's amazing how many people haven't noticed that.

    As far as the query is concerned, using TOP exactly as Gail posted is the recommended approach.

    Paul