[sql] Oracle SELECT TOP 10 records

You get an apparently random set because ROWNUM is applied before the ORDER BY. So your query takes the first ten rows and sorts them.0 To select the top ten salaries you should use an analytic function in a subquery, then filter that:

 select * from 
     (select empno,
             ename,
             sal,
             row_number() over(order by sal desc nulls last) rnm
    from emp) 
 where rnm<=10