I'm looking for a mySQL query which will give me N records per unique
columnName. Consider the following table;

Name, Company, Other info... 
Dave, RBS, x 
Rob, RBS, x 
Jim, RBS, x 
Bob, RBS, x 
Karen, RBS, x 
Dave, Digex, x 
Lee, Digex, x 
Mike, FDR, x 
Wayne, FDR, x 
Sarah, FDR, x 
Yasmin, FDR, x 

I would expect the query to return;

Dave, Rob, Jim, Dave, Lee, Mike, Wayne and Sarah (and their
accompanying company/otherInfo)

I've managed to achieve this is Microsoft Access using the following SQL query;

SELECT 
Company 
, Name 
, OtherStuff 
FROM someTable 
WHERE 
DCount("name","someTable","Name <= '" & [name] & "' AND company = '" &
[company] & "'")<=3
ORDER BY Company, Name; 

but now want to do it in mySQL (i'm using version 4.1.10) it would be
a bonus too if anyone knows a way of doing it in SQL Server or Oracle.

I do not want to use;
a) a php script with a for each loop 
b) a stored procedure 

Hope you can help!

Thanks

I'm just playing with google answers ... it turns out I have an answer
for your question :) I have to post it as a comment  because the
registration for researcher accounts is closed.

SET @a:=0;SELECT p.*, (@a:=@a+1) AS rownum 
FROM person p
GROUP BY company, rownum
HAVING rownum <= 3

actually ejemm ... my previous post is not a complete answer for your
question, altough I hope it will help ;)

any how, here is the complete answer:

SET @a:=0;SELECT p.*, IF(@c=p.company, @a:=@a+1, @a:=1) AS rownum, (@c:=p.company) 
FROM person p
GROUP BY company, rownum
HAVING rownum <= 3

Thanks neomeneo! That looks like it is on the right lines but doesn't
appear to be returning what I want. I'm just getting 1 row from each
company- though it does look a bit like it could be a bug in
phpMyAdmin as it says;

Showing rows 30 - 59 (123 total, Query took 0.0408 sec)

...and yet there are only 11records on the screen (plus the 30records
from page 1)... so 41 records (1/3rd the amount should be returned?)

I'll see what happens if i execute from php or a gui mySQL front-end.

Yessssssssssss! I just cracked it! Many, many, many thanks neomeneo,
couldn't have done it without your help!

SET @c:=0;
SET @a:=0;
SELECT p.*, IF(@c=p.company, @a:=@a+1, @a:=1) AS rownum, (@c:=p.company) 
FROM person p
GROUP BY company, rownum
HAVING rownum <= 3

I looked and @c was returning NULL for every record because it hadn't
been dimmed i guess?

Work now though! Awesome!