This solution will be in Monday's edition of PostgreSQL General Bits (http://www.varlena.com/GeneralBits). (In other words, if it doesn't do what you mean, let me know now!)
CREATE TYPE topscores AS (id integer, query integer, checksum char(32), score integer); CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION topscores(integer) RETURNS SETOF topscores AS ' DECLARE t topscores%ROWTYPE; r RECORD; q RECORD; n alias for $1; BEGIN FOR q IN SELECT distinct query from table70 order by query LOOP FOR t IN SELECT id , query, checksum, score FROM table70 where query = q.query ORDER BY query, score DESC LIMIT n LOOP RETURN NEXT t; END LOOP; END LOOP; RETURN; END; ' language 'plpgsql'; select * from topscores(1) ; select * from topscores(2) ; select * from topscores(3) ; On Thu, Apr 08, 2004 at 07:55:33PM +0000, Jeff Boes wrote: > 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 > > > ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- > TIP 1: subscribe and unsubscribe commands go to [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 6: Have you searched our list archives? http://archives.postgresql.org