The SELECT DISTINCT Statement

The DISTINCT keyword is used to return only distinct (different) values.

The SELECT statement returns information from table columns. But what if we only want to select distinct elements?

With SQL, all we need to do is to add a DISTINCT keyword to the SELECT statement:

Syntax

SELECT DISTINCT column_name(s)

FROM table_name

Using the DISTINCT keyword

To select ALL values from the column named "Company" we use a SELECT statement like this:

SELECT Company FROM Orders

"Orders" table

Company	OrderNumber
Sega	3412
Velocityscape	2312
Trio	4678
Velocityscape	6798

Result

Company

Sega

Velocityscape

Trio

Velocityscape

Note that "Velocityscape" is listed twice in the result-set.

To select only DIFFERENT values from the column named "Company" we use a SELECT DISTINCT statement like this:

SELECT DISTINCT Company FROM Orders

Result:

Company

Sega

Velocityscape

Trio

Now "Velocityscape" is listed only once in the result-set.