Question

I am using the PIVOT function on a SELECT RANK() over(Partition by…) to return a table “matrix” showing which of my war gaming friends have the most wins per army. I want to limit the matrix to only show the top 3 ranked members per army (eg. in the “HE” column in the image below I want to exclude the highlighted record with the rank of “4”)

I presume I need to include a WHERE or TOP clause but cannot determine it’s location. I have tried looking on this site and google but cannot find an answer. Sorry if this is a learner’s question but I’m still fairly new to SQL Server.

Here are the two tables [Armies] and [Battles] (in spreadsheet format):-
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Ana40VqkvVtRdDAwc1BRWnhsWEdaaTQzcFprQmlyeVE

Here’s my code:-

SELECT *
FROM
    (
    SELECT
        RANK() over(Partition by ArmyMnemonic Order by COUNT(WDL) desc, Member) as ranks, ArmyMnemonic, Army, Member,
         COUNT(WDL) as Wins
    FROM
        [dbo].[Battles]

    INNER JOIN Armies on Army1 = Armies.ArmyNum

    Where
        WDL=2 and Home=1 -- represents a "Win"
    Group By
        Member, ArmyMnemonic, Army, WDL
    ) as rnk

PIVOT (sum(rnk.ranks) for ArmyMnemonic in([Be],[Br],[DoC],[DE],[Dw],[HE],[Li],[OK],[OG],[Sk],[TE],[TK],[VC],[WoC],[WE])) as pvt

ORDER BY Wins Desc;

Thanks for any help you can give.

CREATE TABLE Scripts:-

USE [WFBattlesDB]
GO

/****** Object:  Table [dbo].[Armies]    Script Date: 11/09/2012 13:24:15 ******/
SET ANSI_NULLS ON
GO

SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON
GO

SET ANSI_PADDING ON
GO

CREATE TABLE [dbo].[Armies](
[ArmyNum] [int] NOT NULL,
[ArmyMnemonic] [nvarchar](3) NOT NULL,
[Army] [char](30) NOT NULL,
[Official] [bit] NULL,
[Active] [bit] NULL,
 CONSTRAINT [PK_Armies] PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED 

(
[ArmyNum] ASC
)WITH (PAD_INDEX = OFF, STATISTICS_NORECOMPUTE = OFF, IGNORE_DUP_KEY = OFF, ALLOW_ROW_LOCKS = ON, ALLOW_PAGE_LOCKS = ON) ON [PRIMARY]
) ON [PRIMARY]

GO

SET ANSI_PADDING OFF
GO

---

USE [WFBattlesDB]
GO

/****** Object:  Table [dbo].[Battles]    Script Date: 11/09/2012 13:25:35 ******/
SET ANSI_NULLS ON
GO

SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON
GO

CREATE TABLE [dbo].[Battles](
[keyBattle] [int] IDENTITY(1,1) NOT NULL,
[subDate] [datetime] NOT NULL,
[Member] [nvarchar](20) NOT NULL,
[Home] [bit] NOT NULL,
[Army1] [int] NOT NULL,
[Army2] [int] NOT NULL,
[WDL] [int] NOT NULL,
[PtsVal] [int] NULL,
[MVU] [nvarchar](30) NULL,
[Fun] [int] NULL,
[Luck] [int] NULL,
[Notes] [nvarchar](1500) NULL,
[Link] [nvarchar](255) NULL

) ON [PRIMARY]

GO

Answer 1

You cannot use the ranks in the WHERE clause because it is used in the PIVOT function. So you can create a second ranks column, to filter on. I created a second column in the inner select:

RANK() over(Partition by ArmyMnemonic Order by COUNT(WDL) desc, Member) as rankFilter

You can then use this in the WHERE clause:

SELECT Army, Member, Wins, [Be],[Br],[DoC],[DE],[Dw],[HE],[Li],[OK],[OG],[Sk],[TE],[TK],[VC],[WoC],[WE]
FROM
(
    SELECT
        RANK() over(Partition by ArmyMnemonic Order by COUNT(WDL) desc, Member) as ranks, ArmyMnemonic, Army, Member,
         COUNT(WDL) as Wins,
       RANK() over(Partition by ArmyMnemonic Order by COUNT(WDL) desc, Member) as rankFilter
    FROM
        [dbo].[Battles]

    INNER JOIN Armies on Army1 = Armies.ArmyNum

    Where
        WDL=2 and Home=1 -- represents a "Win"
    Group By
        Member, ArmyMnemonic, Army, WDL
    ) as rnk

PIVOT (sum(rnk.ranks) for ArmyMnemonic in([Be],[Br],[DoC],[DE],[Dw],[HE],[Li],[OK],[OG],[Sk],[TE],[TK],[VC],[WoC],[WE])) as pvt
where rankFilter <=3

ORDER BY Wins Desc;

Or you can apply the WHERE in a subquery before the PIVOT:

SELECT Army, Member, Wins, [Be],[Br],[DoC],[DE],[Dw],[HE],[Li],[OK],[OG],[Sk],[TE],[TK],[VC],[WoC],[WE]
FROM
(
    select *
    from
    (
        SELECT
            RANK() over(Partition by ArmyMnemonic Order by COUNT(WDL) desc, Member) as ranks, ArmyMnemonic, Army, Member,
             COUNT(WDL) as Wins
        FROM
            [dbo].[Battles]

        INNER JOIN Armies on Army1 = Armies.ArmyNum

        Where
            WDL=2 and Home=1 -- represents a "Win"
        Group By
            Member, ArmyMnemonic, Army, WDL
    )  rnk
    where rnk.ranks <= 3
) src
PIVOT (sum(ranks) for ArmyMnemonic in([Be],[Br],[DoC],[DE],[Dw],[HE],[Li],[OK],[OG],[Sk],[TE],[TK],[VC],[WoC],[WE])) as pvt

ORDER BY Wins Desc;