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

By: Muhammad Umer

Muhammad Umer — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 16:51:17 +0000

Dear all i need a help from you people. I am using vb6 & ms sql server2000. I have two tables.

1- Order (master table) having data

ORDERID DATE EMPNAME
1 1-2-1999 JOHN
2 1-1-2010 JOHN
3 1-12-2011 FOAD

2-Orderdetail (child table) having data

PRID PRNAME SP QTY TOTAL ORDERID
11 CD 5 10 50 1
11 CD 5 5 25 1
12 DVD 10 5 50 2

i wan to get data like this

Empname Prname Qty SP total
JOHN CD 15 5 75
DVD 5 10 50

Regards

By: Deepak Gakhar

Deepak Gakhar — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 12:43:19 +0000

I need your help ragarding sql query.

Val_1, Val_2, Val_3,Val_4
a b c 1
a b c 2
a b c 4
m n o 1
m n o 2

and output should be

val_1, Val_2,val_3, val_4
a b c 1,2,4
m n o 1,2

Pls help if anyone know…

By: Varun

Varun — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 12:45:34 +0000

Hi Sally,

You can do the following to get the results inon estatement.

SELECT Col1,COUNT(*) AS Total FROM TMP
GROUP BY Col1
ORDER BY Col1

By: Blueprint RSA

Blueprint RSA — Tue, 31 May 2011 04:03:50 +0000

Thanks for posting this very informational blog. Now I know the difference between DISTINCT and GROUP BY. I hope to achieve something from what I learn today.

By: madhivanan

madhivanan — Wed, 04 May 2011 14:55:35 +0000

It should be

select company_name ,department_name from Department_Master where Status = ‘N’ group by company_name, order by company_name

By: harsh shah

harsh shah — Mon, 02 May 2011 13:20:29 +0000

this is my query and

select company_name ,department_name from Department_Master where Status = ‘N’ order by company_name, group by company_name

It shows me this kind of the error

Msg 156, Level 15, State 1, Line 1
Incorrect syntax near the keyword ‘group’.

What should i do to use the group by clouse in sql server 2008

Thanks in advance

By: pradeep Tiwari

pradeep Tiwari — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 07:38:45 +0000

I guess something is missing in Article. Distinct creates a temp table and remove duplicates. Group by essentially does the same things, but it has additional overhead of sorting the records. By default group by is ASC sort. so Group by is slower in cases where the key grouping column is not indexed. If the query columns are already in clustered indexed, it may be same operation.
I would go with query plan and based on instincts will prefer Distinct over Group by

By: madhivanan

madhivanan — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 06:02:10 +0000

You cannot use distinct that way. What do you want to get? Post some sample data with expected result

By: Vicky Raj Sharma

Vicky Raj Sharma — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 07:41:55 +0000

SELECT ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY inserted_date DESC)
AS Row, distinct product_type, parent_id,product_id,brand_id,device_id,p.subcategory_id,upc_code,sku,product_name,p.description,price,product_image,
isDevice,dimension_length,dimension_length_unit,dimension_width,dimension_width_unit,
dimension_height,dimension_height_unit,dimension_weight,dimension_weight_unit from tblProductDetails p join tblSubCategory s
on p.subcategory_id=s.subcategory_id
where parent_id=@cat_id and p.subcategory_id=@sub_id

My distinct keyword is having error.

By: madhivanan

madhivanan — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 11:55:23 +0000

Make sure to read this
http://beyondrelational.com/blogs/madhivanan/archive/2008/09/12/return-top-n-rows.aspx

By: raj

raj — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 12:07:08 +0000

Hi,

i want to find distinct top.

top 3 for all UserId’s.

for ex:

the table is as below:

Id UserId Date
1 10 10/10/2010
1 10 10/10/2010
1 5 10/10/2010
1 10 10/10/2010
1 5 10/10/2010
1 7 10/10/2010
1 10 10/10/2010
1 5 10/10/2010
1 10 10/10/2010
1 5 10/10/2010

In the above table userid 10, 5 & 7 has 5, 4 & 1 rows respectively.

Now i expect 3 or below 3 from each user.

For Ex:

Id UserId Date
1 10 10/10/2010
1 10 10/10/2010
1 10 10/10/2010
1 5 10/10/2010
1 5 10/10/2010
1 5 10/10/2010
1 7 10/10/2010

how to solve this.

regards
rajendran

By: Manikandan

Manikandan — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 07:00:44 +0000

Very nice…

By: KUMAR

KUMAR — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 07:18:31 +0000

why we should not use distinct and group by within the same sql statement or query??? any performance issue can u explain pls????????

By: jazzy

jazzy — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 02:16:08 +0000

thanks

By: Santhu

Santhu — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 15:22:23 +0000

Hi All,
I have a db with fields Part number,supplier number and country name

I would like to get a table with one unique record for partnumber and the country1 name country 2 name,–etc..
example this is what I have

partno suno country
001 123 US
001 234 IN
001 567 AU
001 897 CA
002 235 IN
002 566 SR

etc…

I need a table like this

part num country1 country 2 country 3 country 4
001 US IN AU CA
002 IN SR

etc…

Maximum suppliers will be usually from 1-10 ( Assumption)

Could anyone please help me out with the sql query to get this result.

.we may have use do while loop,but no clear idea

please hep me out..

Thanks,
Santhu

By: Ram

Ram — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 01:49:24 +0000

Hey Sally,

U can use above query which gives the result that u expected

Thanks
Ram

By: Ram

Ram — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 01:48:11 +0000

DECLARE @tmp TABLE(SrNo INT)

INSERT INTO @tmp VALUES(3)
INSERT INTO @tmp VALUES(3)
INSERT INTO @tmp VALUES(4)
INSERT INTO @tmp VALUES(5)
INSERT INTO @tmp VALUES(5)
INSERT INTO @tmp VALUES(5)
INSERT INTO @tmp VALUES(9)
INSERT INTO @tmp VALUES(8)
INSERT INTO @tmp VALUES(9)
INSERT INTO @tmp VALUES(9)
INSERT INTO @tmp VALUES(9)
INSERT INTO @tmp VALUES(9)

SELECT SrNo,COUNT(*) AS Total
FROM @tmp group by SrNo

By: Brian Tkatch

Brian Tkatch — Mon, 31 May 2010 13:08:28 +0000

@nahid

What should the result be?

By: lokesh

lokesh — Sat, 29 May 2010 13:14:23 +0000

i have results like the following

Marea,Garea,SGarea
bck1,gitem1,sgitem1
bck1,gitem1,sgitem2
bck1,gitem1,sgitem3
bck2,gitem2,sgitem11
bck2,gitem2,sgitem12
bck2,gitem2,sgitem13

i require quey which should give result like below
(note:i wanted to show in a gridview like below)

bck1 gitem1 sgitem1
sgitem2
sgitem3
bck2 gitem2 sgitem11
sgitem12
sgitem13

can any one give me some idea.how i can make it possible.

from
lokesh

By: nahid

nahid — Sun, 09 May 2010 07:39:01 +0000

Hi
I have a problem with join and group by
when I use group by in sub query the result will be done with 7 rows

SELECT classNameId , max( viewCount) as viewcount
FROM tagsasset
group by classNameId

classNameId viewcount
10011 0
10020 0
10040 0
10056 31
10066 10
10067 5409
10111 2

but when join it the result has 63 rows
because I put 2 condition
when it was do 2 conditon for equal result show all of the row have this result

SELECT TA.title,TA.viewcount,TA.classnameid,c.value
from tagsasset TA inner join classname_ c
on c.classnameid=TA.classnameid
inner join
(SELECT classNameId , max( viewCount) as viewcount
FROM tagsasset
group by classNameId )groupet on
TA.viewcount=groupet.viewcount
and
groupet.classnameid=TA.classnameid
view classnameid
0 10040
0 10040
0 10040
0 10040
0 10040
0 10040
0 10040
0 10040
0 10040
0 10040
0 10040
0 10040
0 10040
0 10040
0 10040
31 10056
10 10066
5409 10067
2 10111
2 10111

I have duplicate result
plz help me

By: Jignesh Shah

Jignesh Shah — Fri, 07 May 2010 05:03:58 +0000

Thanks brian thanks a lot ! :-)

Sorry it was for lowest quantity…

By: Brian Tkatch

Brian Tkatch — Thu, 06 May 2010 11:50:53 +0000

@Jignesh

The lowest or the highest?

WITH
Data(product, price, qty)
AS
(
SELECT ‘A’, 10, 5 UNION ALL
SELECT ‘A’, 20, 2 UNION ALL
SELECT ‘A’, 30, 1 UNION ALL
SELECT ‘B’, 20, 3 UNION ALL
SELECT ‘B’, 10, 7
),
Data_RN
AS
(
SELECT
product,
price,
qty,
ROW_NUMBER() OVER(PARTITION BY Product ORDER BY qty DESC) RN
FROM
Data
)
SELECT
product,
price * qty
FROM
Data_RN
WHERE
RN = 1;

By: Jignesh Shah

Jignesh Shah — Wed, 05 May 2010 10:41:49 +0000

Hi,

I have the following data in the table.

product price qty
====================
A 10 5
A 20 2
A 30 1
B 20 3
B 10 7

The result that i expect from SQL query
basically the total = sum (price x qty) but quantity should be the lowest among same product

for product A is
LINETOTAL
50

for product B is
SUMTOTAL
70

Could you please help me how to write the SQL query.

Thanks,
Jignesh

By: RSA Online

RSA Online — Mon, 03 May 2010 13:18:31 +0000

I’ll use DISTINCT as it is the true meaning of what I want to achieve… I had just heard in the past that GROUP BY was a lot more performant, but like you say it should execute the same query plan – and I can always check that too!

So thanks, I am now not as “anti-DISTINCT” as I was before I read your post. ;-)

Cheers.

By: sally

sally — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 13:52:31 +0000

HI, i am new to OLAP in Sql Server 2005, bascially i have read through lots of article on this OLAP and basically i get to know how it works and function theorically, but i could not find an article to show me step by step on how to create the cube and how to query the data from the cube. Would very much appreciated if somebody out there can explain to me in details how to i create cube from sql server 2005 as i totally no idea at all. Though i can view the sample cude in sql server 2005, but i dunno how to create it from my relational database. I need it very urgent as needed by my job functionality. Hope to get some explanation from you guys asap. Just assume i am totally new and please guide me step by step to create a normal and simple cube and query from the cube. I just need to create simple prototype. Thanks alot yea guys :)