The SQL SELECT DISTINCT Statement
In a table, some of the columns may contain duplicate values. This is not a problem, however, sometimes you will want to list only the different (distinct) values in a table.
The DISTINCT keyword can be used to return only distinct (different) values.
SQL SELECT DISTINCT Syntax
SELECT DISTINCT column_name(s)
FROM table_name |
SELECT DISTINCT Example
The "Persons" table:
| P_Id | LastName | FirstName | Address | City |
| 1 | Hansen | Ola | Timoteivn 10 | Sandnes |
| 2 | Svendson | Tove | Borgvn 23 | Sandnes |
| 3 | Pettersen | Kari | Storgt 20 | Stavanger |
Now we want to select only the distinct values from the column named "City" from the table above.
We use the following SELECT statement:
| SELECT DISTINCT City FROM Persons |
The result-set will look like this:
