Question

I’d like to find the different ways to solve a real life problem I had: imagine to have a contest, or a game, during which the users collect points. You have to build a query to show the list of users with the best ‘n’ scores.

I’m making an example to clarify. Let’s say that this is the Users table, with the points earned:

UserId - Points 1      - 100 2      -  75 3      -  50 4      -  50 5      -  50 6      -  25 

If I want the top 3 scores, the result will be:

UserId - Points 1      - 100 2      -  75 3      -  50 4      -  50 5      -  50 

This can be realized in a view or a stored procedure, as you want. My target db is Sql Server. Actually I solved this, but I think there are different way to obtain the result… faster or more efficent than mine.

Answer 1

Untested, but should work:

select * from users where points in (select distinct top 3 points from users order by points desc)