>I need to get the last 10 records of a table based on a condition. However, that table is pretty big and I don't want to use the TOP 10 clause as it will take too long. What type of approach can I use which would be the best? I am looking for a SQL approach. If that is not possible then I'll consider using code.

If your conditions are few and fixed, you could make a little table for each condition in which you cache the last 10 inserts into the main table that match the condition.