Received: from maia.hub.org (maia-3.hub.org [200.46.204.243]) by mail.postgresql.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0D11C632CC3 for ; Tue, 8 Jun 2010 14:06:17 -0300 (ADT) Received: from mail.postgresql.org ([200.46.204.86]) by maia.hub.org (mx1.hub.org [200.46.204.243]) (amavisd-maia, port 10024) with ESMTP id 05040-10 for ; Tue, 8 Jun 2010 17:06:09 +0000 (UTC) X-Greylist: from auto-whitelisted by SQLgrey-1.7.6 Received: from exprod6og110.obsmtp.com (exprod6og110.obsmtp.com [64.18.1.25]) by mail.postgresql.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 3BB42632ABB for ; Tue, 8 Jun 2010 14:06:08 -0300 (ADT) Received: from source ([66.152.196.38]) by exprod6ob110.postini.com ([64.18.5.12]) with SMTP ID DSNKTA54fwzYK38xgYTt6Qam4VfeZfTifE2m@postini.com; Tue, 08 Jun 2010 10:06:09 PDT Received: from EXCHENT01.bzzagent.lan ([172.16.92.24]) by owa.bzzagent.com with Microsoft SMTPSVC(6.0.3790.4675); Tue, 8 Jun 2010 13:06:31 -0400 Received: from 172.16.1.85 ([172.16.1.85]) by EXCHENT01.bzzagent.lan ([172.16.92.24]) with Microsoft Exchange Server HTTP-DAV ; Tue, 8 Jun 2010 17:04:43 +0000 User-Agent: Microsoft-Entourage/12.14.0.081024 Date: Tue, 08 Jun 2010 13:04:41 -0400 Subject: Some insight on the proper SQL would be appreciated From: Aaron Burnett To: Message-ID: Thread-Topic: Some insight on the proper SQL would be appreciated Thread-Index: AcsHLK86jdr1yNgxOEecNXj79MAF1Q== Mime-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit X-OriginalArrivalTime: 08 Jun 2010 17:06:31.0125 (UTC) FILETIME=[F0DE5850:01CB072C] X-Virus-Scanned: Maia Mailguard 1.0.1 X-Spam-Status: No, hits=-1.49 tagged_above=-5 required=5 tests=BAYES_50=0.8, RCVD_IN_DNSWL_MED=-2.3, T_FILL_THIS_FORM_SHORT=0.01 X-Spam-Level: X-Archive-Number: 201006/32 X-Sequence-Number: 34223 Greetings, Any help on this would be appreciated. I have a table which is a list of users who entered a contest. They can enter as many times as they want, but only 5 will count. So some users have one entry, some have as many as 15. How could I distill this down further to give me a list that shows each entry per user up to five entries per user? In other words, I need a separate line item for each entry from each user up to the maximum of 5 rows per user. Table looks like this: username | firstname | lastname | signedup --------------------------------------+-----------+-------------+----------- - ffc4bd0a-ccff-4203-a03c-4bd6b8c23a03 | Jean | Mathews | 2010-03-13 ffc4bd0a-ccff-4203-a03c-4bd6b8c23a03 | Jean | Mathews | 2010-05-07 ffc4bd0a-ccff-4203-a03c-4bd6b8c23a03 | Jean | Mathews | 2010-06-06 ff8720d4-f808-4ee6-90e6-649872fdfa55 | Janis | Bunch | 2010-03-12 ff48d89b-6afe-4ba0-8539-9683bec62c89 | Sandy | Yashnyk | 2010-04-25 ff48d2a4-0637-4e46-9461-3dd0dc0d4d83 | Kendra | Elliott | 2010-05-09 ff3a2a14-2575-44d5-b40b-3780f4d2506a | Kay | Maher | 2010-04-20 fef7625b-d1e1-4c1a-bc82-d35a4a6db16d | Carolyn | Woodul | 2010-04-05 fef21bbb-07a0-4c84-8708-4dc41b8b770b | Laurie | Montijo | 2010-04-03 feee6473-af4d-4e70-b20c-a74ba08c000f | Geneva | Anderson | 2010-04-03 feb690fc-0afb-4e87-b0d1-bdb2c4603fd1 | Judith | Astroff | 2010-06-05 fea0f9a6-e89f-4dbd-b3fd-83efed27221f | Jennifer | Lavigne | 2010-02-09 fea0334e-4ae1-4599-b24d-9a5d8ce4fd37 | John | Smith | 2010-03-20 fea0334e-4ae1-4599-b24d-9a5d8ce4fd37 | John | Smith | 2010-03-27 fea0334e-4ae1-4599-b24d-9a5d8ce4fd37 | John | Smith | 2010-04-03 fea0334e-4ae1-4599-b24d-9a5d8ce4fd37 | John | Smith | 2010-04-10 fea0334e-4ae1-4599-b24d-9a5d8ce4fd37 | John | Smith | 2010-04-17 fea0334e-4ae1-4599-b24d-9a5d8ce4fd37 | John | Smith | 2010-04-25 fea0334e-4ae1-4599-b24d-9a5d8ce4fd37 | John | Smith | 2010-05-01 fea0334e-4ae1-4599-b24d-9a5d8ce4fd37 | John | Smith | 2010-05-08 fea0334e-4ae1-4599-b24d-9a5d8ce4fd37 | John | Smith | 2010-05-16 fea0334e-4ae1-4599-b24d-9a5d8ce4fd37 | John | Smith | 2010-05-22 fea0334e-4ae1-4599-b24d-9a5d8ce4fd37 | John | Smith | 2010-05-30 fea0334e-4ae1-4599-b24d-9a5d8ce4fd37 | John | Smith | 2010-06-06 fe825a6d-6820-4282-b8e9-2e3cb9f660e8 | Susan | Stowe | 2010-03-12 fe825a6d-6820-4282-b8e9-2e3cb9f660e8 | Susan | Stowe | 2010-03-15 But in John Smith's case where he has more than 5 entries, I would like query results to limit him to just 5 entries to look like this: username | firstname | lastname | signedup --------------------------------------+-----------+-------------+----------- - ffc4bd0a-ccff-4203-a03c-4bd6b8c23a03 | Jean | Mathews | 2010-03-13 ffc4bd0a-ccff-4203-a03c-4bd6b8c23a03 | Jean | Mathews | 2010-05-07 ffc4bd0a-ccff-4203-a03c-4bd6b8c23a03 | Jean | Mathews | 2010-06-06 ff8720d4-f808-4ee6-90e6-649872fdfa55 | Janis | Bunch | 2010-03-12 ff48d89b-6afe-4ba0-8539-9683bec62c89 | Sandy | Yashnyk | 2010-04-25 ff48d2a4-0637-4e46-9461-3dd0dc0d4d83 | Kendra | Elliott | 2010-05-09 ff3a2a14-2575-44d5-b40b-3780f4d2506a | Kay | Maher | 2010-04-20 fef7625b-d1e1-4c1a-bc82-d35a4a6db16d | Carolyn | Woodul | 2010-04-05 fef21bbb-07a0-4c84-8708-4dc41b8b770b | Laurie | Montijo | 2010-04-03 feee6473-af4d-4e70-b20c-a74ba08c000f | Geneva | Anderson | 2010-04-03 feb690fc-0afb-4e87-b0d1-bdb2c4603fd1 | Judith | Astroff | 2010-06-05 fea0f9a6-e89f-4dbd-b3fd-83efed27221f | Jennifer | Lavigne | 2010-02-09 fea0334e-4ae1-4599-b24d-9a5d8ce4fd37 | John | Smith | 2010-03-20 fea0334e-4ae1-4599-b24d-9a5d8ce4fd37 | John | Smith | 2010-03-27 fea0334e-4ae1-4599-b24d-9a5d8ce4fd37 | John | Smith | 2010-04-03 fea0334e-4ae1-4599-b24d-9a5d8ce4fd37 | John | Smith | 2010-04-10 fea0334e-4ae1-4599-b24d-9a5d8ce4fd37 | John | Smith | 2010-04-17 fe825a6d-6820-4282-b8e9-2e3cb9f660e8 | Susan | Stowe | 2010-03-12 fe825a6d-6820-4282-b8e9-2e3cb9f660e8 | Susan | Stowe | 2010-03-15 The username is unique for each user. pg version 8.25 on RHEL Any help in this would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.