This is just about the most bizarre query I’ve ever written, but I’m pretty sure it gets the “last 5” rows from a table without ordering:
select *
from issues
where issueid not in (
select top (
(select count(*) from issues) - 5
) issueid
from issues
)
Note that this makes use of SQL Server 2005’s ability to pass a value into the “top” clause – it doesn’t work on SQL Server 2000.