With Sybase 12.5 and later you can use the top predicate in your select statement. This is a non-ANSI feature which MSSQL has had for quite a while.
select top 10 * from people
You can’t use top in subqueries, updates, or deletes, and there is no corresponding ‘bottom’ clause.
The advantage of top is you don’t have to worry about resetting it. This is especially important if you are using a database connection pool.