That's exactly what I don't want to do.

Is there a way to leave it like that, and check if the query result is too big and take only the top...

That solution works fine.

But I have the following error message:

Message

Executed as user: MYDOMAIN\MYUSER.

NbError: 631

[SQLSTATE 01000] (Message 0) File attachment or query results size exceeds allowable value of...

Did you found the answer?

I only found how to do it in MS SQL Server 2000.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa224829(v=sql.80).aspx