>Is it possible, and if so how, to reduce the number of record
>returned by a query without changing the query?

No, it isn't. But if you're using Firebird, the required change is minimal.

>For exmaple if I had a table called table1 that contained 10,000
>records and I wrote a query of : select field1, field2 from table1.
>This obviously will return all of the records, but what I want to do
>is have that query but reduce the result set to say ten records.

select first 10 field1, field2 from table1.

Set