SQL challenge--top 10 for each key value?

From: Jeff Boes <jboes(at)nexcerpt(dot)com>
To: pgsql-sql(at)postgresql(dot)org
Subject: SQL challenge--top 10 for each key value?
Date: 2004-04-08 19:55:33
Message-ID: 33af4fa4e4ec230574cefcff737ea40a@news.teranews.com
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Offered up for anyone with time on their hands. I fiddled around with
this for half an afternoon, then gave up and did it programmatically in
Perl.

Given a table that looks something like this:

id | INTEGER
query | INTEGER
checksum | char(32)
score | INTEGER
include | BOOLEAN

The table is unique by "id". "Checksum" may be repeated, but I only care
if it is repeated within a given group by "query". ("query" is non-null.)

I can get the top scorer for each "query" row by something like this:

SELECT * FROM (
SELECT DISTINCT ON (checksum) *
FROM my_table
ORDER BY checksum, score DESC)
ORDER BY query;

How would you go about getting the top N (say, the top 10) for each query?

And then, if that's too easy for you--consider a further case where I
want every row for a given "query" that has "include" TRUE, and enough
non-"include" rows to make N. I might end up with more than N rows for a
given value of "query" if there were more than N with "include" set.

I headed off in the direction of groups of SELECTs and UNIONs, and quit
when I got to something like four levels of "SELECT ... AS FOO" ...

--
Jeff Boes vox 269.226.9550 ext 24
Database Engineer fax 269.349.9076
Nexcerpt, Inc. http://www.nexcerpt.com
...Nexcerpt... Extend your Expertise

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