Hi all,
I' m stuck in this problem :

I have a Query with 2 Fields : ForumID, PostID.
I want with only One SQL command (MySQL), it can do : "with every ForumID, show LITMIT 5 of PostID", for example :

ForumID PostID
1 17
1 12
1 8
1 7
1 4

3 20
3 15
3 11

4 16
4 14

Please guide me to write that SQL (MySQL), I wrote one but it cannot LIMIT PostID in every ForumID :

SELECT forumID, postID GROUP BY forumID, postID ORDER BY forumID, postID DESC

thank you very much,

You can use a query with a temporary table:

CREATE TEMPORARY TABLE tempforums (
autoid INT NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
forumid INT NOT NULL,
postid INT NOT NULL,
PRIMARY KEY (forumid, postid)
);

INSERT INTO tempforums(forumid, postid)
SELECT forumid, postid FROM your_table
ORDER BY postid DESC;

SELECT forumid, postid FROM tempforums
WHERE autoid <= 5
ORDER BY forumid, postid DESC;

thanks for your reply
but it want GROUP BY ForumID, then its PostID after that, like :

ForumID PostID
1 7
1 6
1 4
3 5
3 2
3 1

your SQL just return all mixed ForumID, PostID

any better idea ? pls help me

I did make a mistake in the SQL I gave to you, but that mistake shows me that you did not even try the code. The CREATE TABLE statement should be

CREATE TEMPORARY TABLE tempforums (
autoid INT NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
forumid INT NOT NULL,
postid INT NOT NULL,
PRIMARY KEY (postid, forumid, autoid)
);

MySQL gives errors when you run the create statement I gave you. Try this one. It will return what you want, without using GROUP BY.

You are confused on the use of GROUP BY. If you have a query with only two fields and you use GROUP BY on both of them, you are telling the DBMS not to do anything with grouping. If you say "GROUP BY forumid" and leave it at that, you will only get one line per forumid. GROUP BY is used to specify how to generate summaries. If you had specified

GROUP BY forumid, postid DESC

You would have not needed to use the ORDER BY clause because MySQL automatically orders the columns used in a GROUP BY clause.

thank you aus,
in fact I 've not tried your code yet when I replied you cause my lack of experience, sorry :-)
your code worked well and help me understand much about GroupBy and other things, thank you again, good luck to you ;-)

hi, last words to someone who stucked like me :-)
aus is right with his code, but a small thing should be correct :

CREATE TEMPORARY TABLE tempforums ( ... , PRIMARY KEY (forumid, autoid)) => don't have "postid" in primary key.

I tried it successfully with MySQL, thanks again aus :-)