Selecting ODD or EVEN rows from a table

July 5, 2010

in FAQ, Pseudocolumns, SQL

Selecting ODD or EVEN rows from a table

Question: How can I select only the even/odd rows from an Oracle table?

Answer: Talking of “even or odd rows” is meaningless in Oracle until you have ordered the rows. Oracle does not store rows in a specific order – the order has to come from the query.

Once the order is specified, then the query to retrieve odd rows or even rows can be written in this form:

  1. Write a subquery with an ORDER BY clause. Along with the data columns, select the pseudocolumn rownum with an alias, say rn.
  2. In the outer query, reference the alias rn and use the mod function to get odd rows or even rows.

An example using SCOTT schema‘s emp table: let’s say my result set is ordered by employee numbers.

Odd Rows

SQL> select * from
  2  (select empno, ename, sal, rownum rn
  3  from emp
  4  order by empno)
  5  where  mod (rn, 2) <> 0;

     EMPNO ENAME             SAL         RN
---------- ---------- ---------- ----------
      7369 SMITH             800          1
      7521 WARD             1250          3
      7654 MARTIN           1250          5
      7782 CLARK            2850          7
      7839 KING             5000          9
      7876 ADAMS            1100         11
      7902 FORD             3000         13

7 rows selected.

Even Rows

SQL> select * from
  2  (select empno, ename, sal, rownum rn
  3  from emp
  4  order by empno)
  5  where  mod (rn, 2) = 0;

     EMPNO ENAME             SAL         RN
---------- ---------- ---------- ----------
      7499 ALLEN            1600          2
      7566 JONES            2975          4
      7698 BLAKE            2850          6
      7788 SCOTT            3000          8
      7844 TURNER           1500         10
      7900 JAMES             950         12
      7934 MILLER           1300         14

7 rows selected.

Photo by tuchodi

{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }

1 KiranGayathri February 21, 2013 at 6:11 pm

Thank you.Nice..

2 Surya August 27, 2014 at 9:36 pm

how can u print even rows by this syntax which u r given above it absolutely wrong.

To display odd rows syntax is
select employee_id, first_name from employees where mod(employee_id, 2)=0;

To display even rows, syntax is
select employee_id, first_name from employees where mod(employee_id, 2)=1;

3 oratabler August 27, 2014 at 11:14 pm

@KiranGayathri: You’re welcome.

@Surya: The question is about the position of rows in a result set, not the values of an id column.

4 Samir May 30, 2017 at 6:01 pm

Very well explained. Thank you very much.

5 Vipul July 28, 2019 at 3:04 pm

This is wrong. In oracle it doesn’t select rownum=2 . Try it.

6 Basavaraj Hunshal November 18, 2020 at 4:38 pm

EVEN:
select * from emp where (rowid,0) in (select rowid, mod(rownum,2) from emp);
ODD :
EVEN:
select * from emp where (rowid,1) in (select rowid, mod(rownum,2) from emp);

7 Jasper June 15, 2021 at 2:09 pm

HI,

On the above discussion, now how to print all even rows at first and all odd rows next using sql queries.

8 NARAYANAMMA March 5, 2024 at 1:46 pm

THANK UU SO MUCH

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