SQL Anywhere® 10 - Error Messages  > Database Error Messages  > Alphabetic list of error messages

The result returned is non-deterministic

FIRST or TOP n are used in a SELECT statement to limit the size of a result. The statement must also have an ORDER BY if the result is to be well-defined. If it does not have an ORDER BY, then the server is free to return any subset of the result that has the requested number of rows.