Get top n records for each group of grouped results

Question

Here is one way to do this, using UNION ALL (See SQL Fiddle with Demo). This works with two groups, if you have more than two groups, then you would need to specify the group number and add queries for each group:

(
  select *
  from mytable 
  where `group` = 1
  order by age desc
  LIMIT 2
)
UNION ALL
(
  select *
  from mytable 
  where `group` = 2
  order by age desc
  LIMIT 2
)

There are a variety of ways to do this, see this article to determine the best route for your situation:

http://www.xaprb.com/blog/2006/12/07/how-to-select-the-firstleastmax-row-per-group-in-sql/

Edit:

This might work for you too, it generates a row number for each record. Using an example from the link above this will return only those records with a row number of less than or equal to 2:

select person, `group`, age
from 
(
   select person, `group`, age,
      (@num:=if(@group = `group`, @num +1, if(@group := `group`, 1, 1))) row_number 
  from test t
  CROSS JOIN (select @num:=0, @group:=null) c
  order by `Group`, Age desc, person
) as x 
where x.row_number <= 2;

See Demo

In other databases you can do this using ROW_NUMBER. MySQL doesn't support ROW_NUMBER but you can use variables to emulate it:

SELECT
    person,
    groupname,
    age
FROM
(
    SELECT
        person,
        groupname,
        age,
        @rn := IF(@prev = groupname, @rn + 1, 1) AS rn,
        @prev := groupname
    FROM mytable
    JOIN (SELECT @prev := NULL, @rn := 0) AS vars
    ORDER BY groupname, age DESC, person
) AS T1
WHERE rn <= 2

See it working online: sqlfiddle

---

Edit I just noticed that bluefeet posted a very similar answer: +1 to him. However this answer has two small advantages:

1. It it is a single query. The variables are initialized inside the SELECT statement.
2. It handles ties as described in the question (alphabetical order by name).

So I'll leave it here in case it can help someone.

Try this:

SELECT a.person, a.group, a.age FROM person AS a WHERE 
(SELECT COUNT(*) FROM person AS b 
WHERE b.group = a.group AND b.age >= a.age) <= 2 
ORDER BY a.group ASC, a.age DESC

DEMO

How about using self-joining:

CREATE TABLE mytable (person, groupname, age);
INSERT INTO mytable VALUES('Bob',1,32);
INSERT INTO mytable VALUES('Jill',1,34);
INSERT INTO mytable VALUES('Shawn',1,42);
INSERT INTO mytable VALUES('Jake',2,29);
INSERT INTO mytable VALUES('Paul',2,36);
INSERT INTO mytable VALUES('Laura',2,39);

SELECT a.* FROM mytable AS a
  LEFT JOIN mytable AS a2 
    ON a.groupname = a2.groupname AND a.age <= a2.age
GROUP BY a.person
HAVING COUNT(*) <= 2
ORDER BY a.groupname, a.age DESC;

gives me:

a.person    a.groupname  a.age     
----------  -----------  ----------
Shawn       1            42        
Jill        1            34        
Laura       2            39        
Paul        2            36      

I was strongly inspired by the answer from Bill Karwin to Select top 10 records for each category

Also, I'm using SQLite, but this should work on MySQL.

Another thing: in the above, I replaced the group column with a groupname column for convenience.

Edit:

Following-up on the OP's comment regarding missing tie results, I incremented on snuffin's answer to show all the ties. This means that if the last ones are ties, more than 2 rows can be returned, as shown below:

.headers on
.mode column

CREATE TABLE foo (person, groupname, age);
INSERT INTO foo VALUES('Paul',2,36);
INSERT INTO foo VALUES('Laura',2,39);
INSERT INTO foo VALUES('Joe',2,36);
INSERT INTO foo VALUES('Bob',1,32);
INSERT INTO foo VALUES('Jill',1,34);
INSERT INTO foo VALUES('Shawn',1,42);
INSERT INTO foo VALUES('Jake',2,29);
INSERT INTO foo VALUES('James',2,15);
INSERT INTO foo VALUES('Fred',1,12);
INSERT INTO foo VALUES('Chuck',3,112);


SELECT a.person, a.groupname, a.age 
FROM foo AS a 
WHERE a.age >= (SELECT MIN(b.age)
                FROM foo AS b 
                WHERE (SELECT COUNT(*)
                       FROM foo AS c
                       WHERE c.groupname = b.groupname AND c.age >= b.age) <= 2
                GROUP BY b.groupname)
ORDER BY a.groupname ASC, a.age DESC;

gives me:

person      groupname   age       
----------  ----------  ----------
Shawn       1           42        
Jill        1           34        
Laura       2           39        
Paul        2           36        
Joe         2           36        
Chuck       3           112      

Snuffin solution seems quite slow to execute when you've got plenty of rows and Mark Byers/Rick James and Bluefeet solutions doesn't work on my environnement (MySQL 5.6) because order by is applied after execution of select, so here is a variant of Marc Byers/Rick James solutions to fix this issue (with an extra imbricated select):

select person, groupname, age
from
(
    select person, groupname, age,
    (@rn:=if(@prev = groupname, @rn +1, 1)) as rownumb,
    @prev:= groupname 
    from 
    (
        select person, groupname, age
        from persons 
        order by groupname ,  age desc, person
    )   as sortedlist
    JOIN (select @prev:=NULL, @rn :=0) as vars
) as groupedlist 
where rownumb<=2
order by groupname ,  age desc, person;

I tried similar query on a table having 5 millions rows and it returns result in less than 3 seconds

Check this out:

SELECT
  p.Person,
  p.`Group`,
  p.Age
FROM
  people p
  INNER JOIN
  (
    SELECT MAX(Age) AS Age, `Group` FROM people GROUP BY `Group`
    UNION
    SELECT MAX(p3.Age) AS Age, p3.`Group` FROM people p3 INNER JOIN (SELECT MAX(Age) AS Age, `Group` FROM people GROUP BY `Group`) p4 ON p3.Age < p4.Age AND p3.`Group` = p4.`Group` GROUP BY `Group`
  ) p2 ON p.Age = p2.Age AND p.`Group` = p2.`Group`
ORDER BY
  `Group`,
  Age DESC,
  Person;

SQL Fiddle: http://sqlfiddle.com/#!2/cdbb6/15