Indeed. In a relational way of thinking, it only make sense to talk about the "first N rows", if you have a query with an ORDER BT clause. If you want the "first row" given some ordering, you can often do that with a WHERE clause. Say:

    SELECT name, gender
      FROM people
  ORDER BY age
     LIMIT 1
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can also be written as

    SELECT name, gender
      FROM people
     WHERE age = MIN (age)
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That is, you ask for the record with minimum age.

Abigail