I don't normally use rowcount, but i think this will work:

set rowcount 100
select age, name from persons order by age desc


>I need a way to get the top 100 records without using LIMIT or TOP...
>
>something like this:
>create table person(name varchar(30), age int);
>
>...and I need just the 100 oldest people... anyone know how to do this?
>
>Thanks!