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SQL Tutorial - Distinct SQL Statement


It is expected that you have visited the 'Select' statement examples and have a basic understanding of T-SQL.

Here the 'DISTINCT' statements is executed on the 'Customers' table.

The Distinct Statement


The 'DISTINCT' statement is used to remove duplicate records or rows from a 'SELECT' statement call. For example, if you want to see the various cities that your customers are from, but without repeating the cities, you can use the 'distinct' clause in your  'SELECT' statement. The DISTINCT clause can be used with SELECT statements only.

SQL Distinct Syntax


Select Distinct column_name FROM table_name

The Distinct Statement Example


Table Name :

Customers
CustomerID CustomerName EmailID Address City PostalCode Country
C001 Fredrick Johnson FJohnson@yahoo.com Berkeley Gardens 12 Brewery London WX1 6LT UK
C002 Mary Davidson Mary@gmail.com 35 King George Madrid 28023 Spain
C003 George Clooney George@hotmail.com Obere Str. 57 Berlin 12209 Germany
C004 David Louis David@mail.com 2743 Bering St. NewJersy 07019 USA
C005 Johnny Anderson Johnny@gmail.com 55 Grizzly Peak Rd. NewJersy 07019 USA
C006 Paul Henriot PaulHenriot@yahoo.com 59 rue de l'Abbaye Paris 51100 France
C007 Henry King Henry@mail.com 120 Hanover Sq. London WA1 1DP UK
C008 Robert John Robert@gmail.com 87 Polk St. Suite 5 San Francisco 94117 USA

The Select * from Customers displays all the columns and data in them from the CUSTOMERS table. As you can see some of the city names are repeated as shown above.

Select Distinct City from Customers

The above Distinct statement removes the repeating data and displays only the first occurence of the city name in this case.

City
Berlin
London
Madrid
NewJersy
Paris
San Francisco


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