title: Select top 5 biggest values - Oracle
body: <p>This is an Oracle question.</p>
  
  <p>I need to find the top 5 biggest values in a series of records. Say I have 2000 records, and there is a column that holds number values in each record. I need to check this number field and only select the top 5 biggest. </p>
  
  <p>So if I have these values in my number column </p>
  
  <pre><code>22
  3
  44
  2
  23
  9
  4
  2
  99
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Then the following would be returned </p>
  
  <pre><code>22
  44
  23
  9
  99
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I'm currently having to parse the number value from the field as it is a string. I parse it with the following</p>
  
  <pre><code>REGEXP_SUBSTR(SUBSTR(ADDITIONAL_INFO, 1 ,
                INSTR(ADDITIONAL_INFO, ',', 1,1)), '[0-9]+') "CELLS"
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I'm thinking there might be looping and if else selection involved. If this were C# I could do this in a few minutes. But the Oracle syntax is throwing me off. </p>
  
  <p>Please help.</p>