You've to add 'order by begin_date desc' to the first select in whcih case it cannot be part of UNION.

>Our company tracks plans of health services for consumers. For any given consumer the plans are consecutively numbered, starting with 1. Each plan has a begin date. I need to return a result set of service plan numbers and dates as follows:
>Return the last (latest) 3 plans by plan date plus the next plan number (which will have a null date). For instance consumer A has 4 plans as follows
>

Plan #	Begin date
>1	01/01/2001
>2	01/01/2002
>3	12/15/2002
>4	12/01/2003
>

>My result set should look like
>

Plan #	Begin date
>5	null
>4	12/01/2003
>3	12/15/2002
>2	01/01/2002
>

>When I use a TOP statement with a union as follows
>

Select top 3
>blah, blah
>union
>select next number
>order by begin_date desc
>

>I end up with
>

Plan #	Begin date
>5	null
>3	12/15/2002
>2	01/01/2002
>1	01/01/2001
>