Get top results for each group (in Oracle)

Question

How would I be able to get N results for several groups in an oracle query.

For example, given the following table:

|--------+------------+------------|
| emp_id | name       | occupation |
|--------+------------+------------|
|      1 | John Smith | Accountant |
|      2 | Jane Doe   | Engineer   |
|      3 | Jack Black | Funnyman   |
|--------+------------+------------|

There are many more rows with more occupations. I would like to get three employees (lets say) from each occupation.

Is there a way to do this without using a subquery?

Answer 1

I don't have an oracle instance handy right now so I have not tested this:

select *
from (select emp_id, name, occupation,
      rank() over ( partition by occupation order by emp_id) rank
      from employee)
where rank <= 3

Here is a link on how rank works: http://www.psoug.org/reference/rank.html