Question

Here is the table:
User

Name:  Subject:
Peter   Math
Mary    Chinese
Mary    Computer
Mary    Hist
Mary    PE
Mary    English
Peter   Art
Chris   English
Chris   Computer
Peter   Computer
Paul    Math

I would like to get the the top appear in name, and return top 4 result should be subject name. For example, in this case top appear name is Mary, and base on the order in subject, the Chinese , Computer, English, so I would like to have the result:

Mary    Chinese
Mary    Computer
Mary    English
Mary    Hist

If Mary is not the most enough to show the result, the second people will be the follow, like, let say the table will like this:

Name:  Subject:
Peter   Math
Mary    Chinese
Mary    Computer
Mary    Hist
Peter   Art
Chris   English
Chris   Computer
Peter   Computer
Paul    Math

The result will be,

Mary    Chinese
Mary    Computer
Mary    Hist
Peter   Art

Because Mary is the most appear, so Mary will return, but Mary is not enough to fill in 4 positions, so the second most appear will take the place, in this case, we use Peter.

Answer 1

SELECT user.name, user.subject
FROM user
INNER JOIN (
    SELECT name, COUNT(1) AS occurrences
    FROM user
    GROUP BY name
  ) AS user_occurrences
  ON user.name = user_occurrences.name
ORDER BY user_occurrences.occurrences DESC, user.name ASC, user.subject ASC
LIMIT 4

edit This might perform better, depending on the RDBMS you’re using and the size of the dataset. Try both and compare.

SELECT user.name, user.subject
FROM user
INNER JOIN user AS user_occurrences
  ON user.name = user_occurrences.name
GROUP BY user.name --, user.subject Second GROUP BY not needed on MySQL, but it should logically be there
ORDER BY COUNT(user_occurrences.subject) DESC, user.name ASC, user.subject ASC
LIMIT 4