Select top 10 records for each category
If you are using SQL 2005 you can do something like this...
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 <= 10If your RankCriteria has ties then you may return more than 10 rows and Matt's solution may be better for you.
In T-SQL, I would do:
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
SELECT r.*FROM( SELECT r.*, ROW_NUMBER() OVER(PARTITION BY r.[SectionID] ORDER BY r.[DateEntered] DESC) rn FROM [Records] r) rWHERE r.rn <= 10ORDER BY r.[DateEntered] DESC