I need to select the top 3 rows per each group (xID -- order by xID).  No
problem here.  But I need to select the count of rows in each group before a
null value is encountered in the stat column -- ordering by xID

CREATE TABLE #tmp1(rowID int Identity(1,1), xID int, x1 int, stat varchar(1))

INSERT INTO #tmp1
SELECT 1, 1, 'f'
UNION ALL SELECT 1, 2, 'f'
UNION ALL SELECT 1, 3, 'f'
UNION ALL SELECT 1, 4, 'f'
UNION ALL SELECT 2, 1, 'f'
UNION ALL SELECT 2, 2, null
UNION ALL SELECT 2, 3, 'f'
UNION ALL SELECT 2, 4, 'f'
UNION ALL SELECT 3, 1, 'f'
UNION ALL SELECT 3, 2, 'f'
UNION ALL SELECT 3, 3, null

Here is what I have for getting the top 3 rows per group:

SELECT * FROM #tmp1 t1 WHERE EXISTS
(SELECT * FROM (SELECT TOP 3 * FROM #tmp1 t2 WHERE t2.xId = t1.xId ORDER BY
t2.xid) t3 WHERE t3.rowID = t1.rowID).  This returns:

rowID     xID             x1           stat
1    1    1    f
2    1    2    f
3    1    3    f
5    2    1    f
6    2    2    NULL
7    2    3    f
9    3    1    f
10    3    2    f
11    3    3    NULL

From here I need to get this output

xID         rowcount     stat
1               3                f
2               1                f
3               2                f

xID = 1 had 3 rows (no null values encountered)
xID = 2 had 1 row before encountering a null
xID = 3 had 2 rows before encountering a null

Is it possible to get this output from the source data without looping?

Thanks,
Rich