diff --git a/src/java/org/apache/hadoop/sqoop/manager/SqlManager.java b/src/java/org/apache/hadoop/sqoop/manager/SqlManager.java
index b710c6f3..fc9aafce 100644
--- a/src/java/org/apache/hadoop/sqoop/manager/SqlManager.java
+++ b/src/java/org/apache/hadoop/sqoop/manager/SqlManager.java
@@ -67,7 +67,8 @@ public SqlManager(final SqoopOptions opts) {
    * be tuned per-database, but the main extraction loop is still inheritable.
    */
   protected String getColNamesQuery(String tableName) {
-    return "SELECT t.* FROM " + tableName + " AS t";
+    // adding where clause to prevent loading a big table
+    return "SELECT t.* FROM " + tableName + " AS t WHERE 1=0";
   }
 
   @Override