Comments on: SQL SERVER – Difference between DISTINCT and GROUP BY – Distinct vs Group By

By: Asharaf Ali

Asharaf Ali — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 05:26:51 +0000

Thanks
useful info

By: Brian Tkatch

Brian Tkatch — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 13:54:43 +0000

@Lizbeth Morales

The query didn’t seem to come through correctly.

Please repost it, along with the COLUMNs in each TABLE used. It is hard to determine what is going on without them.

By: Lizbeth Morales

Lizbeth Morales — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 23:40:45 +0000

Hello I am trying to make a selection in 3 different tables using distinct, but I keep getting duplicate values, my tables are Alumni, History, and Groups, I get the id and name of students enrolled in the group 230, my query is

SELECT DISTINCT H. Go, A. LastName, A. Name FROM History H, Alumni A, Groups I WHERE Group = 230 AND H. H.id = I.id AND ORDER BY I.key = A.key H.id ” )

appear two students with the same value:

9876 M John
9876 M John

I hope you can help me as no way out, and I’m starting to use SQL.

By: Lakshmi S

Lakshmi S — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 07:26:01 +0000

Thanks Pinal.

Very useful posts.

By: parthiban

parthiban — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 12:00:41 +0000

i try to get distinct values for name and get all other fields with out where condition

ex. table

id name level department companyid

1 ram 1 1 1

2 ram 2 2 2

3 kumar 3 3 3

4 Raja 4 4 4

i expect value is
1 ram 1 1 1

3 kumar 3 3 3

4 Raja 4 4 4

(or)
1 ram 1 1 1

2 ram 2 2 2

4 Raja 4 4 4

By: New techie Praveen

New techie Praveen — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 09:20:17 +0000

Thanks Pinal,

These posts are very useful.
I found them after attending your presentation in teched delhi.

By: phani

phani — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 09:14:38 +0000

select DENSE_RANK() Over (Order by col1, col2 ) as Ranky, col1, col2 from table where…
group By Col1, col2 — gives distinct

By: Shahid

Shahid — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 08:56:47 +0000

Dear

Could u plz suggest me a technique where i can implement transactional replication technique with ONE – MANY Tables relationships……….. i want to replicate the different remote databases with same name n having same articles and structures in centralized single database with same single articles………………..

By: Kashif

Kashif — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 04:43:50 +0000

Hye!

I’m trying a simple query with DISTINCT keyword as:

SELECT DISTINCT SecCode FROM Sections ORDER BY SecCode

in SQL Server 2005, but it is not giving me any result.

Can anyone help me?

Thanks!

By: Suresh

Suresh — Fri, 29 May 2009 05:38:20 +0000

hi thanks so much for between dif but when and why used this arti……..

By: pinaldave

pinaldave — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 12:49:50 +0000

Thank you Ted

By: Ted Burrett

Ted Burrett — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 11:09:58 +0000

I read your posts for quite a long time and should tell that your posts always prove to be of a high value and quality for readers.

By: Imran Mohammed

Imran Mohammed — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 11:13:55 +0000

@shwaria

Remove comma (,) at the end of second line, to reduce confusion, you can use different column name.

select CurrentOperator, COUNT(*) Count_CurrentOperator from EZBusDB.dbo.Buses
GROUP BY CurrentOperator

~IM

By: Saranda

Saranda — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 09:56:05 +0000

“select CurrentOperator, COUNT(*) CurrentOperator from EZBusDB.dbo.Buses
GROUP BY CurrentOperator”

Delete Comma(,) At the End of Your Command

By: Shwaria

Shwaria — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 04:21:34 +0000

Hi Pinal,

I have a situation, I want to count the amount of time a similar name occurs in a table.

E.g.

Table Buses,

Starmart
Starmart
Starmart
Starmart
Starmart
Damai
Damai
Damai
Damai
Damai
Damai
Damai
Damai
Senibudaya
Senibudaya
Senibudaya
Senibudaya
Senibudaya
Senibudaya
Senibudaya
Senibudaya

How do i actually type out a sql script to group and return the count for each name.

This is what i used so far
select CurrentOperator, COUNT(*) CurrentOperator from EZBusDB.dbo.Buses
GROUP BY CurrentOperator,

I am getting this error:
Msg 102, Level 15, State 1, Line 2
Incorrect syntax near ‘,’.

How i go about it?

Thank you!

By: SQLAuthority News - Best Articles on SQLAuthority.com Journey to SQL Authority with Pinal Dave

Tue, 24 Feb 2009 12:07:03 +0000

[...] SQL SERVER – Difference between DISTINCT and GROUP BY – Distinct vs Group By [...]

By: madhavi

madhavi — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 12:14:10 +0000

i like pinal dave blogs

By: Sagar

Sagar — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 13:53:55 +0000

hi pinal,
i’m struck with an issue related to distinct clause.
i’ve fired a query in which i’ve used distict clause. As per that i’m getting distinct rows but they are repeatative in nature.
e.g. if i’m getting 3 distinct rows from my query; i’m getting 1st row many hundreds of time, followed by 2nd and 3rd row in the same manner. How to suppress these repeated rows and how to only three distinct rows as a output?
Thanx in advance.

By: FeelTheWay

FeelTheWay — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 15:09:08 +0000

When request is very simple, Distinct can be used else always use Group By. really faster.

By: Steve Hatchard

Steve Hatchard — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 18:18:49 +0000

Your best answer is to have two tables – one for unique employee data EmployeeId, EmployeeName, CurrentTitle etc.. and one for multiple row data – EmployeeId, ContractDate. It is usually best practice to “normalise” data like this.

This off topic and not really an issue for DISTINCT.

Steve Hatchard
Director
Mattched IT Ltd