title: Selecting top n elements of a group in Oracle
body: <p>I have an Oracle table which has a name,value,time columns.Basically the table is for logging purposes to store what are the changes made to a particular name,what was the previous value and what time the change was made.</p>
  
  <p>I need to formulate a query to fetch the top n changes for a particular name,and the output should have all the names in the table.
  Any help/suggesstions?</p>
  
  <p><strong>Edit:</strong></p>
  
  <pre>
  Name         Value     Time
  Harish       Pass      1-Nov-2011
  Ravi         Fail      2-Nov-2011
  Harish       Absent    31-Oct-2011
  Harish       Attended  31-Aug-2011 
  Harish       Present   31-Jul-2011
  </pre>
  
  <p>I need to select details of Harish on 1st Nov,Oct 31st,31st Aug and Ravi.</p>