[sql] How to update and order by using ms sql

Ideally I want to do this:

UPDATE TOP (10) messages SET status=10 WHERE status=0 ORDER BY priority DESC;

In English: I want to get the top 10 available (status=0) messages from the DB and lock them (status=10). A message with a higher priority should be gotten first.

unfortunately MS SQL doesn't allow an order by clause in the update.

Anyway how to circumvent this?

As stated in comments below, you can use also the SET ROWCOUNT clause, but just for SQL Server 2014 and older.

SET ROWCOUNT 10

UPDATE messages
SET status = 10 
WHERE status = 0 

SET ROWCOUNT 0

More info: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms188774.aspx

Or with a temp table

DECLARE @t TABLE (id INT)
INSERT @t (id)
SELECT TOP 10 id
FROM messages
WHERE status = 0
ORDER BY priority DESC

UPDATE messages
SET status = 10
WHERE id IN (SELECT id FROM @t)

WITH    q AS
        (
        SELECT  TOP 10 *
        FROM    messages
        WHERE   status = 0
        ORDER BY
                priority DESC
        )
UPDATE  q
SET     status = 10

UPDATE messages SET 
 status=10 
WHERE ID in (SELECT TOP (10) Id FROM Table WHERE status=0 ORDER BY priority DESC);

I have to offer this as a better approach - you don't always have the luxury of an identity field:

UPDATE m
SET [status]=10
FROM (
  Select TOP (10) *
  FROM messages
  WHERE [status]=0
  ORDER BY [priority] DESC
) m

You can also make the sub-query as complicated as you want - joining multiple tables, etc...

Why is this better? It does not rely on the presence of an identity field (or any other unique column) in the messages table. It can be used to update the top N rows from any table, even if that table has no unique key at all.