如果你想生成按节分组的输出，只显示每个节的前n条记录，如下所示:

SECTION     SUBSECTION

deer        American Elk/Wapiti
deer        Chinese Water Deer
dog         Cocker Spaniel
dog         German Shephard
horse       Appaloosa
horse       Morgan

.．.那么下面的代码应该适用于所有SQL数据库。如果您想要前10，只需在查询的末尾将2更改为10。

select
    x1.section
    , x1.subsection
from example x1
where
    (
    select count(*)
    from example x2
    where x2.section = x1.section
    and x2.subsection <= x1.subsection
    ) <= 2
order by section, subsection;

设置:

create table example ( id int, section varchar(25), subsection varchar(25) );

insert into example select 0, 'dog', 'Labrador Retriever';
insert into example select 1, 'deer', 'Whitetail';
insert into example select 2, 'horse', 'Morgan';
insert into example select 3, 'horse', 'Tarpan';
insert into example select 4, 'deer', 'Row';
insert into example select 5, 'horse', 'Appaloosa';
insert into example select 6, 'dog', 'German Shephard';
insert into example select 7, 'horse', 'Thoroughbred';
insert into example select 8, 'dog', 'Mutt';
insert into example select 9, 'horse', 'Welara Pony';
insert into example select 10, 'dog', 'Cocker Spaniel';
insert into example select 11, 'deer', 'American Elk/Wapiti';
insert into example select 12, 'horse', 'Shetland Pony';
insert into example select 13, 'deer', 'Chinese Water Deer';
insert into example select 14, 'deer', 'Fallow';

UNION操作符对您有用吗?每个部分有一个SELECT，然后将它们联合在一起。不过，我猜它只适用于固定数量的部分。

您可以尝试这种方法。 这个查询为每个国家返回10个人口最多的城市。

   SELECT city, country, population
   FROM
   (SELECT city, country, population, 
   @country_rank := IF(@current_country = country, @country_rank + 1, 1) AS country_rank,
   @current_country := country 
   FROM cities
   ORDER BY country, population DESC
   ) ranked
   WHERE country_rank <= 10;

我知道这个帖子有点老了，但我刚刚遇到了一个类似的问题(从每个类别中选择最新的文章)，这是我想出的解决方案:

WITH [TopCategoryArticles] AS (
    SELECT 
        [ArticleID],
        ROW_NUMBER() OVER (
            PARTITION BY [ArticleCategoryID]
            ORDER BY [ArticleDate] DESC
        ) AS [Order]
    FROM [dbo].[Articles]
)
SELECT [Articles].* 
FROM 
    [TopCategoryArticles] LEFT JOIN 
    [dbo].[Articles] ON
        [TopCategoryArticles].[ArticleID] = [Articles].[ArticleID]
WHERE [TopCategoryArticles].[Order] = 1

这与Darrel的解决方案非常相似，但克服了可能返回比预期更多行的RANK问题。

在T-SQL中，我会这样做:

WITH TOPTEN AS (
    SELECT *, ROW_NUMBER() 
    over (
        PARTITION BY [group_by_field] 
        order by [prioritise_field]
    ) AS RowNo 
    FROM [table_name]
)
SELECT * FROM TOPTEN WHERE RowNo <= 10

如果你正在使用SQL 2005，你可以这样做…

SELECT rs.Field1,rs.Field2 
    FROM (
        SELECT Field1,Field2, Rank() 
          over (Partition BY Section
                ORDER BY RankCriteria DESC ) AS Rank
        FROM table
        ) rs WHERE Rank <= 10

如果你的RankCriteria有平局，那么你可能会返回超过10行，Matt的解决方案可能更适合你。